Does Noam Chomsky Hate America?
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Summary
Noam Chomsky is a linguist, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. He has written over 150 books and is considered to be one of the most influential thinkers in American history. In this episode, Noam talks about his early life, how he got into linguistics, and why he believes that classical liberal ideals should be dismantled.
Transcript
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Microsoft is a pure example of absolute tyranny.
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The decisions are made at the top, they're handed down to the next level.
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At the very bottom, you have the right to rent yourself to them.
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As soon as you start deregulating, it moves towards monopolization.
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That's the result of handing things over to the market.
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That's the result of politicians being for sale.
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But to sit here and say everything is the private's fault and everything good that
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ever happened was because of the public and the government. That's extremely naïve to say that.
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Classical liberals would have despised subordinating yourself to a master and most of your waking life.
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That's the form of state capitalism that we have.
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And I think we should move towards a system in which the classical liberal ideals are realized.
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So you continue to take the extremely naïve point of view, to use your word of talking about the individual.
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Is it impossible for you to break out of this looking naively and refusing to look at the institutions in which they function?
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So everybody in the world has heard of MIT, right?
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I mean, think about when somebody goes to MIT and says, oh my gosh, he graduated from MIT.
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But think about it, if somebody talked at MIT for 60 years, that's what my guest did today, Mr. Noam Chomsky, who also has written over 150 books.
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He's a philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, political activist.
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And with that being said, Professor Noam, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.
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So I got a lot of different notes and I'm trying to see what angle to take with you, but I'll get right into it.
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If you don't mind taking a moment and for the few viewers that maybe don't know you, there's a lot of interesting ways people describe you.
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You're described as the, you know, aligning with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
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Can you just give us an idea about what some of your beliefs philosophically, politically, and economically are?
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There was classical liberalism came to grief because it was undermined by the rise of capitalism.
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But the basic ideas of classical liberalism, namely that people should be
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not subjected to the domination of masters, should be free to determine their own fate, should
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be worked together in association to make a better world.
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All of this remained, but outside the framework of mainstream ideology.
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And the libertarian socialism is the standard term in Europe for what is here sometimes called
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anarchism, which tried to realize the ideas of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism.
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Basically the idea that authority and domination are not self-justifying.
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And if they can't, which is usually the case, they should be dismantled in terms of more free and
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So the great 19th century theorist of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill, held that in industry
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and the economy generally, the natural form to which a civilized society should develop is
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self-management by associations of workers in production by people in community and so on without any arbitrary hegemonic authority.
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Got it. So, you know, almost all of us who create our own set of beliefs, whether it's spiritual,
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political, philosophical, economical, there's somebody that influenced us.
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Whether it's, hey, I read Von Mises. Oh my gosh, great stuff. I'm a capitalist.
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I read Ayn Rand. I totally get why I'm more like a libertarian. Or I read Karl Marx. The guy's got some
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good arguments when you think about what's being done. You know, I read, who were some of the folks that influenced you the most?
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Actually, the people who influenced me the most are people whose names will never be known. People on the
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front lines of the struggles for justice and for freedom. Take, say, the American Civil Rights Movement.
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If you ask about the Civil Rights Movement, the name that comes to mind is Martin Luther King, who was a great figure.
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Highly respect him. But he would have been the first to tell you that he was riding on a groundswell that was
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prepared by others, by young snake workers, whose names you don't know, who were riding freedom buses
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in Alabama to try to encourage black farmers to dare to go to vote in the face of lynch mobs and
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brutal sheriffs and so on. Many of them suffered. Some were killed. Those are the kind of people who
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I think we should respect and honor. We rarely even know their names. And there are people like that
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all over the world. Much of what they do is very inspiring. I can't find any higher inspiration than
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What books, maybe? And that was very helpful to share that because it makes me think. But
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what books did you read as a young man coming up? Because it seems like a lot of your philosophy was
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established very early on. And I know, you know, in one of your books, you talk about how you grew up as
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a center leftist, more on like the FDR political type of a range where you were with your family. But what
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books were they when you read and you said, this just makes a lot of sense? Why aren't people
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understanding this? Were there any books that impacted you?
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So many that I can't list them, but ranging across the spectrum. So ranging from when I was a young
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teenager from Bertrand Russell's history of philosophy to hamflets by uneducated workers without people,
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with peasants without formal education in Spain during the anarchist revolution, who recorded what
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they were doing to collectivize their own villages and take control of their lives. Things that I was
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picking up in anarchist bookstores in Fourth Avenue, New York, where I used to go as a young teenager.
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Got it. Who were you in high school? If you and I were 16 years old in high school together,
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I'm sitting next to you. I go to school with you for two years. Who would have people said who
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Noam was at 16, 17 years old? In high school? In high school. Who were you in high school?
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In high school, I was sort of a loner, had a couple of friends. Some of them remained friends till
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the end of their lives just a couple of years ago, but not many. Mostly I kept to myself and I was involved
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in lots of intensive political activities in a different area. Most of my own direct engagements
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in the time had to do with what was then the Zionist movement. Now it would be called anti-Zionist.
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This is before the State of Israel was formed. We're talking about the early 40s.
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And I was involved with groups that were working towards developing a
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bi-national Arab-Jewish cooperative community based on working-class cooperation between
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Palestinian and Jewish workers. That ideal bits and pieces of it were realized, but
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most of it changed radically in 1948. But that was the main activities I was in then and in many ways
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still am. That's lasted through my life. And if you ask about influences, a lot of the people who influenced
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me were people writing in, at that time in Hebrew, people like great essayist Ahad Am, who was
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committed to a form of what he called cultural Zionism, a Zionist recreation of a cultural center
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in Palestine, which would reinvigorate Jewish culture for the entire diaspora, and who wrote
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eloquently, in fact, that the incoming settlers will have to pay attention to the fact, they can't
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ignore the fact that this country is settled, settled by Palestinians. We're going to live with them.
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We're going to deal with them on an equal basis. We have to be integrated with them into the world that
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we're creating. That's the turn of the century, 1900.
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So you've been a true believer for a very, very long time, a true believer a very long time in your
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philosophy. Can you remember when it was when your philosophies were core to the point where nobody
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could change your mind on certain set of philosophies that you had?
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I've never reached that point. We should always be open-minded, willing to listen to new ideas and
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arguments. My own, I wouldn't even call it a philosophy, my own general points of view about
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the nature of life were formed as early as I can remember. I grew up in the depression,
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so there was really deep poverty. My own family, elsewhere, and those scenes stay with me.
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miserable people coming to the door trying to sell rags, something like that. These are indelible
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memories, and I've now seen it all over the world. That's the kind of place I gravitate to,
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whether it's in southern Colombia or eastern Turkey or refugee camps in Lebanon or many other places where
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it's going. Or right here in the United States. You don't have to go very far to see it.
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Most of the world has only seen that in movies. You watch the movies, and the only way you can get
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a depiction of what happened in the Great Depression is, let me go watch a movie, and maybe
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I'll get an idea of it. I mean, I was born and raised in Iran, and I lived there for 10 years,
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and the war happened between Iran and Iraq. I remember it clearly. And then going to Germany,
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living at a refugee camp for a couple years, and seeing what that was like, a small little camp we had,
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and then finally coming to the States. So living in Iran, I grew up watching folks going across the
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street, protesting, flagellating their backs with a streak of blood on the ground, screaming out,
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death upon America. I witnessed that as a kid for 10 years. Obviously not from the day I was born,
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say from four years old, five years old, earliest memories. You would see that. And as a kid,
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that kind of leaves a mark, kind of like what you saw on the Great Depression side. But there was also
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another community that loved America and wanted to come to America for the freedoms it offered.
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Everybody, I think, has a different definition of what America means to them. What does America mean to you?
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It means many different things, ranging from some of the worst crimes in human history,
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like the most vicious system of slavery that was ever created, which still its legacy is very much
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with it, including the virtual extermination of the indigenous population at one extreme, at the other
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extreme, breaking new barriers in popular democracy, developing the concept of we the people, which was a
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revolutionary concept in the 18th century, moving on to protecting freedom of speech to a degree that's
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that's unknown elsewhere. So a mixture of extreme horrors and exciting achievements.
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Which achievements to you would you say are some of the best achievements America's had as a nation?
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The pioneering from the 18th century of mass public democracy. It's been a struggle all the way.
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The Founding Fathers were strongly opposed to it. The Constitution is an aristocratic doctrine which
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seeks to marginalize the general public. But then come constant struggles, constant all through the years,
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to try to provide some real meaning to the concept of we the people. When I talked about
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snake workers in Alabama, that's one kind of contribution. When you talk about
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young people from the Sunrise Movement occupying congressional offices today to try to get Congress
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to move towards taking steps that will save the human species from self-destruction. That's another
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kind of step. So you see these things all the way through history. If you like, it's a kind of sharp class
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war being fought constantly. And you have both sides. It's not contradictions, they're opposing forces. And that's
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the course of history. So you can see horrors. Iran is a case in point. You can take a look at
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the memoirs of General Robert Heuser, who was dispatched by President Carter to carry out a military coup in
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in Iran in 1979. You can see the blurb by Spigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security advisor, who says,
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I guess, then this vindicates him. If a military coup had been carried out, maybe killing who knows how many people,
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we could have maintained the rule of the Shah, the U.S. imposed in 1953, overthrowing Iran's
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parliamentary democracy. So you can see that. You can see other things.
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Yeah. I mean, that, that, that was, so you, you were not supportive of what Carter did to not help
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the Shah at a time where they kept saying, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right.
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It's going to be all right. And then obviously there was a fall of the Shah. You supported
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the Shah, meaning you would have liked it to stay the way it was.
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That's a different question. Once he was ousted, the question is, how should he be treated? I felt,
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despite his enormous crimes, and they were terrible, he should be treated humanely. But that's a
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separate question from the Carter Brzezinski plan to carry out a military coup. Actually, this was
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described openly by Israel's de facto ambassador to Iran, who publicly announced in 1979 that Israel
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had very close relations with the Shah, that what's needed in Iran is a bloody military coup,
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which may kill 10,000 people, but that will suppress the uprising and restore the
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tyrannical rule to the Shah. That's what they had in mind. Well, I'm opposed to that, but I'm in favor
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of treating the tyrant humanely once he was ousted. Interesting. I mean, if you study it a little bit
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deeper, I'm from there, so I put a little bit more time into that specific topic. It was also the 25-year
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contract that oil between France, Germany, UK, and I'm sure you were this with US, where they were
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not happy about the fact that the Shah was about to raise the prices, and 1979 was a specific year
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when the prices was going to go up. So they had a private meeting in South or Central America to figure
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out a way to make it. This strategy was four nations wanting to make sure he didn't stay in power the
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way he did. So it was extremely strategic. But it's interesting to see the fact that you still want
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the individual to be treated in a humane way. You know, if I read some of your books, like if I read
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Who Rules the World, the book that you wrote, Who Rules the World, if I watch your documentary,
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if I watch some of our interviews, if I go watch you and William Buckley have a debate, if I go watch
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any of the stuff that you've done a lot of work, your catalog of work is very wide and very deep,
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I don't get the most positive feeling about America. Almost if I had someone who was not
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an individual who had spent a lot of time wanting to study the history of America, say I have 50
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students here, and I have 50 students here, neither one of them have ever studied the history of
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America. If I gave them your material to read and study for a year, I'm willing to bet most of them
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after you would probably hate America. You know, a lot of the things that I read, it doesn't come
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across as there is that love of what a great country America is. For you, and you make a lot
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of good arguments in your books. I'm watching to see what your points are on this. Okay, this makes
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sense. I see where he's going with this. Do you still, maybe it's not even still, do you think America
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has or is ever been the greatest country in the world? There's no such concept as the greatest
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country in the world, just as there is no greatest human being in the world. Countries have many
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complex characteristics, some of them very outstanding, wonderful, others hideous.
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So take some other country. Let's take Germany, some of the greatest thinkers, scientists,
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artists in the world, the depths of human history as well. What's more, it flips quickly from one to
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the other. You just can't make comments like that. I mean, is Germany, in the 1920s, Germany was regarded as
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the peak of European civilization. And the sciences, philosophy, the arts, was regarded as a model of
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democracy. In the 1930s, 10 years later, it was regarded as the depths of human history. Ten years later,
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beginning of a return to what it once was. So what's Germany? What's England? England has an absolutely
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hideous record of atrocities and destruction for centuries. Iran, in fact, is a case in point.
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We know a lot about it. But Iran could have moved in the early 20th century towards democracy and
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freedom. The British crushed it. When Iran tried to take control of its own energy resources in the early
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50s, Britain tried to crush it by force. When they were unable to, they asked the big guy across the
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Atlantic to come in and smash it for them. Okay, that's one side of Britain, not the worst by any
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means. On the other side, it has, again, my favorite philosophers in history right in front of me. I have
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a book about the friendship between Adam Smith and David Hume in the 18th century, two outstanding
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figures, two of my famous figures in history. So that's another side of England. So what's your
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attitude towards England? You can't answer. Just too many things. Same with every other place you can
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think of. So I don't see any, except for people at patriotic rallies, I don't think you should ask
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questions like, what's the greatest country? So would you be able to say, you know, 60 years
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you've given to MIT, most of your life you've lived in America, you've been all over the world, would you
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be able to say, I love my country, America? I don't love countries. Love is a relationship between
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people. When you love countries, there's something wrong. Should you have loved Germany when it was
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carrying out the Holocaust? Should you have loved Germany when it was at the peak of human civilization?
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You care for people and the societies in which they live. I care for many societies, including this
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one. But you don't love countries. Got it. At least I don't think you should.
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I think there's an emotional connection sometimes with certain set of values
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that one nation offers to you where the other one where you grew up and didn't. It's almost like a,
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I'm not, I wasn't born here. I'm not a U.S. citizen. I can never run to be the president
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here. Or maybe I can be governor or something like that. But this is not really where I was born.
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But this country welcomed me with open arms and gave me an incredible life. And to compare it to
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where I was raised at, I mean, you know, the worst day in America is still 10 times better than the
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best day in Iran. So that's what I mean, where maybe for you, you had some kind of a love for the
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country that, you know, gave me the opportunity to become the country. Sorry, the country didn't give
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you the opportunity. Certain people within the country gave you the opportunity while preventing
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others, victims of our own crimes, from having that opportunity. They gave you the opportunity
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because you were a refugee from a country that was an official enemy. Okay. That's what they did. Take me.
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My parents fled from Eastern Europe, horrible conditions, and did manage to get to the United States.
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And they managed to create a good life for themselves, an even better one for me. Okay. On the other hand,
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a couple of years after they fled from Europe, they happened to make it just before the First World War.
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A few years later, in 1924, the United States passed a law, immigration law of 1924, which was aimed
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particularly at Jews and Italians. I'm Jewish. The idea was to keep Jews and Italians away from the country
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because they were not up there. We don't want that kind of rabble around. Well, that helped put most of
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my extended family into the gas chambers. Okay. They couldn't come here because they were barred in the 1930s.
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Jewish refugees continued to be barred, or virtually a few were let in, in the late 40s, when they were still in concentration camps,
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but then desperately trying to get out. The United States wouldn't have them. Central Americans who were victims of
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massive U.S. atrocities were being kept out right at this moment. They're being driven away from the border
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when they flee from horrors that we created from the 80s. Okay. So it's a very mixed story. Sure. I'm
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glad to have been able to come to the richest country in the world with advantages that don't exist anywhere
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else, thanks to the extermination and expulsion of the native population. So yes, for me, that's very good.
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Does that mean I love the country? No. I admire some things within it. I think we should despise other
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things within it. And the same is true of every other country. Would you call yourself a pessimist or a
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optimist? Well, when asked that, I always appeal to the slogan that Antonio Gramsci made famous. We should
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have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. There's a lot of things that are wrong. That's
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what we should concentrate on, trying to make them better. And we should be optimistic about the
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power to do so, no matter what the obstacles. Yeah. It almost reminds me of, you studied
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obviously a lot of philosophy. I'm assuming you also studied probably Stoicism with Seneca and,
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you know, Marcus Aurelius and the whole, how Stoicism got started, what prior to it used to be called
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cynicism. And a couple of guys are like, listen, I don't want to be part of this cynicism community.
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It was a philosophy and, you know, Seneca kind of stepped away and says, I'm just going to go do
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something else. And then boom, Stoicism got started into what it is today. But it was,
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it was more of the mindset of, I can do something about my life to improve my life. Do you believe
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the individual has the ability and the control and the responsibility and the ultimate level of
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accountability to help improve their situation and their lives? Not just your own life, but to
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improve the world for all of us. And those are, right now, the most urgent questions that have
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ever faced the human species. After all, we might not like to think about it, but we have about a decade
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or two to answer the question as to whether organized human life will persist on earth.
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How certain are you of that? To say a decade or two, that's a pretty extreme statement to say,
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we only have a decade or two. Why do I say that? Yes, it's a fact. If we don't deal with the
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increase of heating, the environment, we will reach tipping points which are irreversible.
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Doesn't mean everybody's going to die tomorrow, but we'll be off on a course which will be unstoppable
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and will lead to essentially the end of organized human life on earth, along with
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millions of other species which we're destroying at the same time. I can't be certain about this,
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but there's a very high probability of it. In fact, virtual unanimity among scientists,
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that this is what's going to happen unless we take control within the next few decades.
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So to say it's a fact, that's a pretty strong statement to say it's a fact. Fact means like,
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Theory of relativity is not a hundred percent. In the empirical world,
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I'm just saying you said fact. I'm just repeating, you said fact.
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So I think what you're saying, there's a possibility, but not necessarily factual.
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Yes. But that's, there's a background understanding since the 17th century that in
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the world of empirical fact, you never reach certainty. So when we talk about facts as we do
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freely, we always mean it with that qualification in the background. We're not going to stop using
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the word fact. Like it's a fact that if I take this coffee cup and I let go of it,
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it's a fact that it'll fall to the ground. Though there in fact is a very slight possibility
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that it'll rise to the sky. Okay. Happens to be the case. There's a spectrum of possibilities of
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which the overwhelmingly high probability, so high that there's no need in the practical world to
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consider anything else, is that it'll fall to the ground.
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But there does happen to be a very minuscule possibility that it might go to the sky.
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But when we talk about facts, we have that understanding in the background.
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Yeah. I mean, I just never seen anything fall up and I've lived 42 years. I've had a hard time
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seeing it. I mean, if things would have gone up and I would have jumped a little higher,
00:30:52.800
I would have been in the NBA today. So I'm hoping that was kind of favoring me,
00:30:55.520
but I couldn't jump more than 15 inches. So I could never go into the NBA. So factually,
00:31:00.800
some of this stuff, maybe I've got some work to do on. Actually, there is. Not that you would do
00:31:05.440
it, but it's just one of the things that could happen in the universe. It could happen in the
00:31:10.320
universe, but that's a could. That's not a fact though. But to say factually in the next 10 or 20 years,
00:31:16.400
that makes somebody sit there and say, two times two is four. That's a fact. Two times two is not
00:31:21.840
going to be five tomorrow. There's a possibility it'll be five tomorrow. That puts a lot of fear in
00:31:26.960
some folks who haven't, who haven't read as much as you have to say, to say the world,
00:31:31.680
you know, we're going in the direction with climate change in 10 or 20 years. That's a scary thought.
00:31:35.760
No, sorry. That's a misunderstanding. Every empirical fact that you can think of
00:31:43.200
has a possibility of being wrong. Whatever it is, that's been understood for centuries.
00:31:50.080
That's different. That could be your opinion, my opinion, research, who wrote it. It's not a matter
00:31:56.080
of opinion. By now, modern physics even explains it in some detail. So it doesn't mean we should stop
00:32:03.200
talking about facts. Of course we should. But we should talk about facts with a recognition always
00:32:10.320
barely possible, sometimes almost inconceivably small probability that they're wrong. So we continue to
00:32:17.200
talk about facts. So when I say it's a fact that this is going to happen, that means there's an
00:32:22.720
overwhelmingly high probability. And we know the factors and so on. If you want every statement
00:32:31.520
that's ever made to be added to this qualification, okay, I don't think that's a wise policy. We should
00:32:39.360
continue to talk about facts. Sure. No, I just think, you know, one of the reasons why we've gotten to where
00:32:46.560
we are in America, this is my opinion. This is not a fact. This is my opinion. I'm very comfortable
00:32:51.120
being wrong. I think one of the reasons why we've gone to where we are today in America as divisive
00:32:55.600
as we are is because both sides think everything they believe in is 100% factual. You know, this is
00:33:03.360
coming from a skeptical Christian. This is coming from a guy that grew up an atheist for 25 years.
00:33:08.800
And I'm sitting there debating all these different issues in the Bible. I'm like, wait a minute,
00:33:12.160
this doesn't matter. And I'm a math guy. So I understand what you're saying. I appreciate
00:33:16.000
that. But let's go to a different topic here. So let's talk about capitalism. Let's talk about
00:33:19.840
capitalism. We have different economical systems in the world. You know, no matter how much I study
00:33:25.040
what you say, you'll take shots at Obama. Then you'll take shots at Bush. Then you'll take shots at
00:33:30.400
Nixon. Then you'll take shots at Carter. Then you'll take shots at Trump. So it's not like you are
00:33:36.000
blindly, no matter what, only defending anybody that is on one side. You're not that. That's not you.
00:33:43.120
You're not a such and such person, such a perfect leader. He can never make a mistake. You don't come
00:33:49.680
from that. That gives you a lot of credibility as a reader to say, I'm actually interested to see what
00:33:53.280
he's thinking about it here. But if we look at economical systems, we've got capitalism, we've got
00:33:57.760
socialism, we've got communism. And then, you know, a couple other things. Marxism would be pretty much the
00:34:02.800
same as socialism, communism, a part of it. What do you think about? Like, when you think about
00:34:08.640
capitalism, out of all the systems that we've had, and the results that capitalism has created,
00:34:13.760
what are your thoughts on capitalism? Well, first of all, I have a different conception of the
00:34:20.400
various options in the world. You see many different kinds. I see one. Every society that's
00:34:28.720
functioning has some variety of state capitalism. Some elements of capitalism constrained by state
00:34:38.240
power. That's true of the United States. It's true of Britain. It was true of Russia under the so-called
00:34:45.280
communists. It's true of China. We can look at the different variants of state capitalism that exist.
00:34:53.920
I think they all have some advantages, many defects. Now, as far as my discussing Biden, Obama, Bush,
00:35:04.880
and so on, there are two kinds of... We have a certain... We have a finite amount of time and energy.
00:35:12.160
We can decide how to use it. One way to use it is to march in parades, praising the magnificence of our
00:35:20.560
leaders and countries along with a great mass of other people. It's a pretty useless activity,
00:35:28.240
in my opinion. The other possibility is to see what's wrong with existing societies and work to
00:35:36.720
try to change them. My feeling is that's where attention and energy should be devoted. So every one of
00:35:46.880
those figures that you mentioned did a lot of things that I think were very wrong, very harmful to others
00:35:53.840
and ourselves. And I think not just them, but the people around them, the social forces within which
00:36:01.680
they were functioning and so on. So I think the sensible thing to do is look at those and try to
00:36:06.880
improve and change them. If that gives an impression of being negative, yes, it's true. I think we should be
00:36:14.400
negative about things that ought to be changed. If you want to applaud, join the multitudes and the
00:36:22.160
parades and praise what's nice, fine. That's okay. It's not very worthwhile. You want to do it on July 4th,
00:36:29.440
okay, but not devoting your life to it. So we should emphasize on the wrong work that you do.
00:36:37.040
You're saying, so as a reader, you've written 150 books, so rather than looking at ideas you have in
00:36:42.160
your book that make sense, I as the reader should look at the things that's wrong about you,
00:36:47.760
not the things you write that's right about you. So that's kind of what you're suggesting.
00:36:51.520
If you're, if you have some special interest in me, say you're my mother, then you should be interested
00:36:59.280
in the things that I do that I shouldn't be doing. Okay. If you care about me.
00:37:06.320
But if not, but if not, I got to constantly be looking.
00:37:09.360
So if you care about the US, if you care about US society, if you don't care about US society,
00:37:16.000
just go march in a parade. If you do care about US society, you'll take a look at what you think
00:37:21.920
ought to be changed and improved. So what you're saying is, if I'm constantly looking at things
00:37:26.640
that are wrong instead of things that are right, I should, that to me means less celebration,
00:37:32.720
more being critical. So I should spend more time protesting than attending parades.
00:37:38.480
Not just protesting, trying to change. If you care about the society at all, you'll be concerned with
00:37:48.000
trying to change the things that are wrong, that hamper its development, that hurt the people in it,
00:37:55.840
and that are harming other people in the world. You'll be committed to changing those if you care
00:38:01.520
about the society. If you don't care about the society at all, you can march in parades.
00:38:08.240
Yeah. But you know, the, the, I mean, I get that. Okay, fine. Let's, let's continue with that. So
00:38:12.880
capitalism, what, what, what is, in your opinion, what is wrong with capitalism? Where do you see the
00:38:17.760
flaws and challenges in capitalism and what will be a better alternative than capitalism?
00:38:22.720
Well, first of all, since there is no capitalism, almost everything we have is an alternative to it,
00:38:29.280
everything in fact. If there were capitalism, it would probably self-destruct within no time.
0.81
00:38:37.280
That's why the business world, pretty much in charge, has always invariably called upon state power
00:38:46.320
to protect them from the ravages of the market and to subsidize them and to carry them through
00:38:54.000
the next stage to develop the next stage of the economy and so on. Why? Let's be quite concrete.
00:39:02.560
We're now using computers, the internet, satellites, microelectronics, so on. Where'd all that come from?
00:39:11.840
Mostly from public investment. You got a vaccine. Mostly from public investment? You mean the gut?
00:39:19.680
So, so most of the innovation we've had in America came from the government, not from the people?
00:39:25.840
Of course. I mean, I was at MIT in the 50s and the 60s when most of this was being developed. It was
00:39:35.120
So, so that's a, that's, that's, that's, that could be an opinion that could not be necessarily
00:39:42.640
a fact, but that's another thing that could be an opinion because you and I are on a computer
00:39:46.800
right now invented by this guy named Steve Wozniak.
00:39:49.760
Well, let's take a look, take a look, take a look computers. They were developed for the risky,
00:39:56.640
creative hard work was done for decades, either in research universities.
00:40:06.240
Yeah, but they, they almost, they almost used the entire city's electricity. They had to have massive
00:40:11.840
towers to have a computer because in order to allow entrepreneurs.
00:40:15.760
Lots of electricity, which is coming from public funding overwhelmingly. So yes, if you look back
00:40:22.320
at it at all, most of it, just the creative hard general work is just done through public engagement.
00:40:31.360
Now you take a look at computers again in 1977, after about 30 years of development of computers,
00:40:39.680
mostly in the public sector. Steve Jobs was be able, able to make a personal computer that you could
00:40:47.200
sell in the market, Apple computer, what I'm using. And then the marketing, the development and so on,
00:40:55.280
was mostly transferred to the private sector. Now, it's more complex than this. So IBM, for example,
00:41:03.200
after learning how to switch from punch cards to modern computers, they learned that mostly in labs,
00:41:15.680
like the one I was working at at MIT, but they did advance to that point. Then they were able to develop
00:41:22.880
their own computer in the early sixties, stretch computer, fastest run around. Nobody could buy it,
00:41:30.320
was way too expensive. So it went to the public sector. It was bought by Los Alamos.
00:41:37.840
And then it was able to develop further. And so it continued. Same with the internet,
00:41:42.880
which was being developed right where it was in fact, in the late fifties, early sixties,
00:41:48.400
public funding. After about 30 years, 1995 or so, it was essentially handed over to private power,
00:41:58.240
largely privatized. That's the way a lot of the economy develops. It goes way back to the early 19th
00:42:07.120
century. 19th century, the main development in the country was railroads. That was the huge economic
00:42:14.960
development. They were much too complicated and extensive for private capital to deal with them.
00:42:22.720
So it was handed over to the Army Corps of Engineers. The mass production,
00:42:30.560
it's called the American way of manufacturing, which astonished the world, late 19th century,
00:42:38.400
quality control, replaceable parts, Taylorism in industry, all of this, which made things much more
00:42:47.600
efficient. It was mostly developed in government armoured and handed out, picked up and used by
00:42:54.480
private capital. Now I'm drawing the lines too sharply. You look at the whole thing,
00:43:00.720
complicated story. There's all kinds of interaction, but this is a large part of economic history
00:43:07.600
all the way through. That's why we always have state capitalism, along with protection of the masters
00:43:17.120
from market ravages. They don't want to face them. The reason we have huge financial institutions
00:43:25.600
is because the government insures them and allows them.
00:43:29.040
I don't disagree with that. That's the part with crony capitalism. I'm not with that. When the big banks
00:43:34.320
got bailed out and they got the checks in a way by Barack Obama or Bush or folks back in the day when
00:43:40.480
Reagan bailed out, I'm not the one that's sitting here saying, let's bail some of these companies out.
00:43:44.640
Because in my opinion, Professor, I don't think monopoly exists without the help of the government.
00:43:51.360
It's quite the opposite. As soon as you start deregulating, it moves towards monopolization.
00:43:57.840
We've seen it. That's the result of handing things over to the market.
00:44:04.240
That's the result of politicians being for sale because their campaigns, they need money to raise
00:44:09.840
campaigns so I can go buy them because they're for sale. And they helped me create a monopoly
00:44:15.360
because I got a couple of people in my pocket. That's been going on for a while. There's a reason
00:44:19.600
why a lot of these bigger companies start off in different cities as headquarters. As they get bigger,
00:44:23.920
they put an office right in D.C. Because I got to go control some of the regulation and laws to
00:44:28.400
not allow the other smaller guy to compete with me long term.
00:44:31.840
You're looking at footnotes. The main thing is that when you begin to deregulate and hand things
00:44:40.000
over to the market, there's a tendency, strong tendency to move towards monopolization.
00:44:46.800
As the bigger fish eat the littler fish have more power that can under price.
00:44:52.400
We're not off page here because I've been on calls before where the FTC,
00:44:58.960
we were doing business with this one company. All of a sudden I get a call from FTC. They want to
00:45:02.480
have a call with us. Great. So we want your entire team to be on the call. Okay. What's this call
00:45:07.360
about? To go back to capitalism, that's why the owners and managers of the world, those who Adam Smith
00:45:16.480
called the masters of the universe, the owners of concentrated capital, that's why they have always
00:45:24.160
called on the state to rescue them from disaster. So going back to the original point, all over the
00:45:31.440
world, we have one or another variety of state capitalism. But why do politicians fall for that,
00:45:37.600
though? Why do politicians fall for that? Politicians can say, we're not bailing you out. Why do they bail
00:45:42.560
them out? The politician doesn't have to say, yes, we'll bail you out. No, we're going to let the
00:45:47.520
market decide how you do. Why would they bail them out? Sorry, why would they want? So you're saying
00:45:53.440
these masters of the universe that Adam Smith talks about, they almost always go to the public to
00:45:59.520
bail them out. But the public has the right to say, no, we're not going to bail you out. Why do they
00:46:03.760
keep saying yes? Because they have very few choices. If you're an individual and you say,
00:46:11.440
I don't like the monopoly of the Comcast and two or three, what are you going to do about it?
00:46:21.600
Well, no, I'm going to, the public is to sit here, but to sit here and say everything is the
00:46:27.360
private's fault and everything good that ever happened was because of the public and the government,
00:46:31.440
not the private. That's extremely naive to say that because you're then painting the picture of
00:46:36.880
the public and all the responsibility that they have to reject these ideas by this,
00:46:42.800
everybody's for sale. All the politicians are for sale. It's the opposite. I'm the one who's saying
00:46:49.520
the public can do a lot. That's what I've been saying all along. I'm writing about,
00:46:55.120
you asked me who I respect. It's the people on the ground who are doing things because they have the
00:47:01.200
options. So what do you think about the guy that worked at IBM and he was making 30 bucks an hour
00:47:08.000
and he works there and he's one of the public. He's one of the smaller guys and he leaves after
00:47:12.800
making $82,000. He doesn't like the way IBM does something, goes and starts his own company. He becomes
00:47:17.280
a billionaire. He went from being the public to being the top 1% of 1% of America. Is he now a bad person?
00:47:23.440
I am not talking about the choices that individuals make. These are the footnotes. If you want to be
00:47:33.440
totally naive about the situation system, take a look at the footnotes. If you want to pay attention
00:47:39.360
to the things that matter, take a look at the major institutional factors. We have a high concentration
00:47:47.920
of economic power, has enormous influence over the state. We have institutions based on a conception
00:47:57.600
that classical liberals would have despised, namely subordinating yourself to a master
00:48:05.040
and most of your waking life. Those are the fundamental principles on which the economy is based.
00:48:13.440
People have choices. They have options. Now let's be concrete about it. So when Reagan came in and
00:48:21.520
Reagan and Thatcher and launched the neoliberal revolution which transferred power even more than
00:48:31.200
normally to the hands of unaccountable private power, the first thing they did was to smash unions
00:48:39.920
for very good reasons. Unions are one of the ways in which people can get together to defend themselves
00:48:47.920
from the onslaught of private power. So if you want to move towards a world where power is in the hands
00:48:56.720
even more than usually of unaccountable private power, you want to eliminate this defense.
00:49:03.920
And there's been a continued onslaught against the possibilities for workers to organize and defend
00:49:10.720
themselves ever since then. It's a large part. And so yes, these are the concrete things that happen
00:49:17.520
in the world. Okay. I don't care about what some guy in IBM decides to do with his life. That's for him to decide.
00:49:24.640
Is that good? Is it good to highlight those stories where somebody who was a low wage, $15 an hour guy,
00:49:32.800
$30 an hour person went and changed his life and became wealthy and his dreams became a reality and
00:49:37.360
created 20,000 jobs. Should we recognize that and turn them into heroes in America?
00:49:43.520
Should we recognize it? Say Steve Jobs? Steve Jobs did a good job or Bill Gates of taking what had been
00:49:54.000
created mostly in the public sector by lots of people whose names you wouldn't even know unless
00:50:01.360
you haven't been working there for decades. They took all this and they turned it into something
00:50:06.960
marketable, which produced a lot of profit for themselves and some jobs on the side.
00:50:14.320
Some jobs on the side. You just say some jobs on the side, like maybe they created seven jobs.
00:50:19.120
Apple employs a lot of people. Microsoft employs a lot of, Walmart employs two and a half million
00:50:23.760
people. It's not some jobs. That's private. That's not necessarily the government.
00:50:27.520
That's right. Making use of what was produced by the general public. Okay. That's correct. There are
00:50:35.520
within the state capital. So what do we do? So if that's the case, what do we do? So I guess my
00:50:39.680
question for you would be, and the only reason I'm interrupting you, because you told me we started
00:50:44.080
off with technical difficulties. I thought we had more time, but you gave me a limited time. So I want
00:50:47.680
to maximize the time that we have together. So, so if that's the case, so what is a system? So it seems
00:50:54.320
like it's a sin for me to employ somebody in your eyes. Like if I employ anybody and pay them a salary,
00:51:00.880
it's a sin. So what's my alternative? What should I do to be holy where I'm not taking advantage in your
00:51:07.920
eyes, where I'm not taking advantage of somebody else? Because in your eyes, if the private, if the
00:51:12.480
private market hires and gives somebody a job, they're like a, they owned a person. But if the government
00:51:18.320
does it, they're being very virtuous. Not the government. You're eliminating the fact.
00:51:24.320
That it's the people who are doing it through the mechanism of the government.
00:51:29.680
It's the taxpayer who developed computers, the internet, your iPhone.
00:51:35.920
So what do we do though? So walk me through it. So one of the criticisms that we do,
00:51:40.320
what do we do? Yeah, exactly what John Stuart Mill talked about, what Abraham Lincoln talked about,
00:51:46.720
what all classical liberals talked about before it was destroyed, handed over the people who created it
00:51:53.520
should manage and control it. The management and decisions and control should be in hands of the
00:52:00.880
participants. You should change autocratic, tyrannical structures to democratic participatory ones.
00:52:10.240
Okay. Have you ever ran a company? Have I ever run a country?
00:52:16.800
Company? Okay. I've also never created relativity theory.
00:52:22.240
No, but if you've never ran it, but if you've never ran a company, what I mean by that is the
00:52:25.680
following. So I bring people smarter than me like yourself to be challenged. I like being challenged,
00:52:30.720
right? But on the company side to say, have the people who created it, run it.
00:52:37.120
The people who created it don't run it. They turn it over to managers who run it. They may make some
00:52:45.120
contribution or they may just go somewhere and live off the accumulated capital. But the fact is,
00:52:52.240
and the question is of the people who manage it, should they be appointed by a tyrannical authority,
00:52:58.800
which is unaccountable? Or should they be chosen by participation of the actual,
00:53:07.120
the people who actually take part in and run the place? Should they be able to participate and
00:53:13.680
control and decide how to manage and run it? That can be done extremely successfully.
00:53:18.720
Where has that been proven? Some of the most successful enterprises in the world are run that
00:53:26.160
way. Name us, give us five of them. Mondragon, for example, the huge conglomerate,
00:53:31.600
and the huge conglomerate. You're using the exception now. You're using the exception. It's not,
00:53:36.240
it's not most, it's less than 1% of 1% of companies. Yeah, that's right. Most of it is
00:53:42.400
government. Most of what happens is what I described. The taxpayer pays for the developed,
00:53:50.160
for the risky, hard, creative work. Particular individuals are able to exploit what has been
00:53:57.680
done at the public expense, turn themselves into tyrants who run things, sometimes for the benefit of
00:54:06.000
the population. That's called, that's the form of state capitalism that we have. And I think we
00:54:13.040
should move towards a kind of system in which the classical liberal ideals are realized. And people are
00:54:20.080
able to democratically participate in deciding how to manage and run their lives, including the
00:54:27.840
institutions in which they work. Professor, with all the respect- If you think they ought to be tyrannies,
00:54:32.160
fine. Say so. It's not, but that's what, that's what your interpretation is. You use words like
00:54:37.760
exploit. You use words as tyrant, tyrannic, tyrannical leaders. You use that. There's nothing.
00:54:45.680
But there's, there's a lot of people to sit there and say, you know, we also have folks that create,
00:54:50.720
these are no, many of these folks are noble human beings who took time away from their families at a
00:54:55.200
time to create a job and create a business that led to creating jobs for other people. 50% of jobs in
00:55:00.800
America today are created by small business owners. These people are not millionaires.
00:55:04.240
These are folks that maybe run a liquor store, maybe run a small market, maybe run a small shop,
00:55:08.640
maybe do some real estate locally. And they hire five people that work for them. They make 100,
00:55:12.320
200,000 dollars a year. That's half of America's employed by small business owners.
00:55:16.800
Are they tyrannical entrepreneurs and business? So you, you continue to take the extremely naive.
00:55:23.840
I think you're taking your word of talking about the individuals. I haven't said a word in criticism
00:55:31.600
about Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or any, somebody running a small store.
00:55:36.160
You said they use what the public created. You said they use what the public created.
00:55:41.200
They, and then they were able to create some jobs.
00:55:43.920
Is it impossible for you to break out of this looking at footnotes naively at the individuals
00:55:53.360
and refusing to look at the institutions in which they function? You take a look at the institution,
00:56:00.080
which to take a, take a business, take Microsoft. Microsoft is pure, a pure example of absolute tyranny.
00:56:11.280
The decisions are made at the top. They're handed down to the next level, go down to the bottom. At the
00:56:18.320
very bottom, you have the right to wrench yourself to them. That's what was abhorred,
00:56:25.040
not only by classical liberals, but by thousands of years of tradition. We've internalized it, and I don't
00:56:32.480
think we should. I think these institutions should be run democratically by the people who participate in
00:56:40.000
them, making use of the contributions that the general society, the general public, has made over
00:56:48.400
the years to create the technology that is now being appropriated to use in these ways. That's the issue.
00:56:56.880
That's nothing to do with individuals. Maybe the guy who runs it is the nicest guy in the world. Fine.
00:57:03.440
I'm talking about what the institution does. So let's take JP Morgan Chase, the world's biggest bank.
00:57:10.400
Maybe the guy who writes it, who runs it, is the absolute nicest guy in the world. He is
00:57:16.320
institutionally constrained to spend the money of JP Morgan Chase to destroy the prospects for human life
00:57:25.120
on earth. That's, if he doesn't do it, he'll be replaced by somebody else who will do it. That's
00:57:31.840
the nature of the state capitalist system. And if we're serious about the world, that's what we
00:57:37.440
ought to be looking at. Not whether this or that guy is a nice person. Noam, last question for you
00:57:43.600
before we wrap up. One of the, this is for us to wrap up the interview. A lot of people have asked,
00:57:50.400
I asked a question on Twitter and Facebook about Noam and you have thousands of fans who showed up
00:57:55.280
and oh my gosh, you know, you know, the, he's challenged the way of thinking on this challenge,
00:57:59.840
the way of thinking, thinking of this, but there were a few that would like to see a debate between
00:58:04.400
you and Thomas Sowell. Would you, would you be open to a debate between you and Thomas Sowell?
00:58:09.120
If there's any point to it, I've read some of his work. It doesn't look very interesting to me,
00:58:15.600
but if I could find time and if he could find time, we could set it up.
00:58:21.200
What if, what if I coordinated and I, if you do it, I'll buy a thousand copies of whatever book you
00:58:26.320
want me to buy and we'll give it away to the viewers. I think the viewers want to see the two
00:58:30.480
of you guys have a discourse. I think, I think the audience and the people who you care about the
00:58:34.400
most would win at the end of the day. If you think so, I could put it on the schedule, but you know
00:58:39.200
what the schedule looks like. Wonderful. If you're open to it, I think that'd be great because I think this
00:58:43.440
will be a way to even make your, make a stronger argument on what your beliefs are. The audience
00:58:48.320
will win. Your folks who believe in your philosophies will win if you address it with him.
00:58:53.440
Not with me, but somebody like Thomas Sowell, who was a, you know, a thinker like you as well. It'd be
00:58:58.560
wonderful to see the clash of the two ideas. Well, I've done that a number of times and I don't find
00:59:04.720
it very useful, but I could, I'm sure he feels the same way. We could try to put it in our schedule.
00:59:10.480
If you're open to it, I could get with his team and coordinate it. This will be wonderful that you
00:59:13.920
make the commitment. I'll be able to make that happen. Good. But don't remember, it won't be
00:59:18.400
till September, at least. Do you know my schedule? You know, I will have, I will have, I know he's
00:59:24.560
also extremely busy, but I will have the team get together and we'll do our best to figure out a time
00:59:29.280
that works for everybody. You know how long it took to schedule this? I don't know. You don't?
00:59:35.040
Well, your manager does. Okay. Yeah. You can ask him. Probably took years because these are very hard
00:59:42.320
to fit things in. So lots of things to do. I don't happen to find that of much interest. I think the
00:59:50.080
world would love the two of you on the big stage. Not the world, a tiny fraction of the world. I
00:59:54.880
think the world would love, we would learn, we would get smarter if you guys would do it. The
00:59:59.360
world, the people would win. But again, professor, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you.
01:00:03.680
Wish you nothing but the very best. Thank you. So number one, if you do want to see the debate
01:00:07.840
between Mr. Thomas Sowell and Professor Noam Chomsky, go on Twitter, my handle, PatrickBedDavid. You got
01:00:13.040
their handles here as well. Share it on Twitter, get it out there and see if people want to see that debate
01:00:17.840
take place. I think the world would benefit. We're talking about 90 plus years of life experience to
01:00:22.640
discuss their own set of philosophies on economy, America, whatever else may be. I'm sure you want
01:00:28.400
to see it as bad as I want to see it. But what was your biggest takeaway from sitting down, you know,
01:00:32.240
listening to my debate within my conversation with a man who worked at MIT and taught for 60 plus years
01:00:37.680
and has written 150 plus books. And whether you agree with them or not, there's a lot of things that
01:00:43.360
he makes you think. And I'm so glad I did this interview. I was just thinking about right now,
01:00:47.200
what are the videos to send you to that's opposing idea of economically. I don't know why I only tend
01:00:52.080
to interview socialists or folks on the left on the economist side. But I did an interview with
01:00:58.960
Laffer a couple of years ago, but that's five years ago. So I would only drive you to two interviews.
01:01:03.200
If you enjoyed the interview today, I think you're going to enjoy my sit down with
01:01:06.400
Professor Richard Wolff. Forbes calls him the number one socialist voice in America. If you've
01:01:13.840
not seen this video, it's phenomenal. The other one was with a communist Slavoj Zizek. If you've
01:01:18.720
not seen this, he will definitely entertain you. Both of them are great. Again, if you,
01:01:24.160
if you're crazy like me and you enjoy topics like this, go check those two interviews out. Take care,