Would you join the Conservatives / Republican Party if…? Policy Choices.

what would it take for me to join the
Conservative Party what policies would the Conservative Party need to adopt for me to be willing to join that party and for me to be willing to wear like a t-shirt in public saying that I'm equip that public party for me to wear a jacket and go to their events number one answer is drug addiction the drug issue the drug culture there is a real opportunity for conservative parties or the Republican Party to bring in someone like me as a supporter by being the party that is really gonna solve the drug problem I want the destination to be a you know a culture and a country of sobriety drug abuse and addiction cost American society more than seven hundred and forty billion dollars annually in lost workplace productivity health care expenses and crime related costs issue number three I'm gonna skip number two and come back to it I think we've got it we've got to come to some kind of reasonable accommodation about what is the meaning of capitalism in the future if you just openly say okay the society we want to have in the future is like Denmark a capitalist society but a capitalist society that cares about the poor a capitalist society that's capable of addressing problems like health care is too expensive education is expensive the result is a very very broad category of being Pro capitalist that can include a lot of people who are now on the left and on the right all right so what's number terrible and what is number two ah immigration / refugee policy so now I want to mention two things that that the cute the two biggest obstacles that prevent me from ever wearing of a conservative name first the first one you can guess you for a million times indigenous people First Nations Native Americans I mean you call yourself a conservative party what the hell is that you're trying to conserve not a JIP way culture apparently right not boy language okay and then the other point you also could guess from the name of this YouTube channel so this is my point to you am I to point less for I wouldn't end up with a conservative party is separation of church and state if the Conservative Party or the Republican Party remains the party of Christian theocracy I can't I can't have anything to do with it for reasons that will soon become clear to you in the audience I decided to challenge myself as a thought exercise what would it take for me to join the Conservative Party what policies would the Conservative Party need to adopt for me to be willing to join that party and I'm not talking about a rebranding where they change their name for the Conservative Party to still be called the Conservative Party and for me to be willing to wear like a t-shirt in public sayings enough put that public party for me to wear a jacket and go to their events and say yeah I rep this party they support this policy therefore I support them got my girl Melissa on the other end of line and Melissa is America so for her the question is exactly the same but it would be the Republican Party and if you're watching this in some other country you know it's it's some other question so you're gonna see my approach to this is pragmatic I'm not going to make up a bunch of policies that the Conservative Party or the Republican Party could never possibly pursue or support my number one answer my number one answer keeping it all the way real is number one answer is drug addiction the drug issue the drug culture there is a real opportunity for conservative parties or the Republican Party to bring in someone like me as a supporter by being the party that is really gonna solve the drug problem because I got to I listen to the left-wing news I listen to left-wing media I read left-wing sources all the time okay what did the Obama presidency do about the drug crisis can we look back at eight years of Obama being in power and say wow you know the left they really tackled they really took on the drug addiction issue it really got better that was really a turning point in our history those eight years where the drug probably better know in those eight years the drug problem got worse and worse and worse currently in Canada we just had the turning point in history Melissa you were with me in Canada what happened marijuana was legalized right so you become more but you you were there when for the first time there are like corner stores there were normal shops selling marijuana so I know from a certain perspective you can say there's a turning point there but you and I Melissa we've lived through you know what used to be the crack academic academic what used to be the crack epidemic and the heroin epidemic has expanded and expanded into being the fentanyl epidemic and the k2 epidemic and none of the older epidemics went away we've still got an alcoholism epidemic in case you didn't know um and when you walk the streets of Los Angeles or you walk the streets of Vancouver you see it and feel it and smell it and hear it how do you want to get you you remember so that was the first time you saw someone with a needle in their arm in public we really again I saw someone openly shooting up on the street needle in arm well what what burns me is so I listen to left-wing sources like The Young Turks and they often talk about poverty what they mean is drug addiction like they'll literally make a statement about people living in tents on the streets of one city or another right well I was looking at Philadelphia last night documentary but Philadelphia did a whole a huge number of people living in tents it's not poverty and left-wing groups with the Young Turks they will with zero irony point the finger at the White House why the Donald Trump and see that he's lying about the economy DeMint well say that he's lying about the unemployment rate because they claim just look at these people living in tents therefore poverty is terrible no no it's it's the drug it's the drug problem it's the drug crisis and there's a really deep disadvantage on the left or prejudice in effect that will prevent them from getting tough on drugs and getting serious about drugs and let me just add to okay so when I say I'd be willing to support this is the first the first checkmark that would make me want to support the conservative party I want a long term end goal I want I want the destination to be a you know a culture and a country of sobriety that's you know predominantly sober where you know drug use is a very minor and you know I'm willing to look at examples like Japan and willing to look at examples like Singapore examples of Communist China I'm going to look at countries that have had really really tough anti-drug laws and where as a result drug addiction is a really minor really rare phenomenon society instead of being a predominant you know predominant part of the landscape put it that way the people are expected to live with and tolerate with unbelievable cost to society what was the number I gave you last night 750 million 750 she slept okay where did you get the number of it was an estimate for what the cost is to to the American taxpayer the total damage done by by drug addiction in America of course this includes prison and rehabilitation programs and crime and so on did you get drug abuse and addiction cost American society more than seven hundred and forty billion dollars annually in lost workplace productivity health care expenses and crime related costs that's a generous estimate but still separate but credit oriented the billions we're somewhere into the hundreds of billions issue number three I'm gonna skip number two and come back to it I think we've got out we've got to come to some kind of reasonable accommodation about what is the meaning of capitalism in the future so babe I'm mentioning this second even though I had third I recently heard an economist talking giving an interview and I got interested in buying his book I've asked Melissa to buy this book for me and when I heard this guy talking I assumed he was quite conservative I assumed he was maybe at the left wing of the Republican Party like he was a Republican who was willing to admit that caring for the poor matters and this kind of thing yes and then I checked the guy's blog and he considers himself worth of the left than Bernie Sanders and to me that's a really interesting illustration of how that broad category can include everyone from conservatives to Bernie Sanders like if you just openly say okay the society we want to have in the future is like Denmark a capitalist society but a capitalist society that cares about the poor a capitalist society that's capable of addressing problems like health care is too expensive education is expensive the result is a very very broad category of being Pro capitalist that can include a lot of people who are now on the left and on the right so do you have anything to say about that maybe I mean like in part you've just been living with me for two years and you've been hearing me agonizing about what's going on in politics and yeah I mean what is what is the opposite of communism what is the alternative to the far left now it seems to me there's this really really broad category that goes a long long way right so I guess I guess the point there is one you would need the Conservative Party to accept the basic premise of taxing the rich and stop being the the party that perpetually promises tax breaks for the rich a party that it says look if you want to be like Denmark if you want to provide these things to society there's gonna be a certain level of Taxation for the rich and I mean I guess the second thing is asking the Conservative Party or the Republican Party to accept privatization as such does not necessarily mean improvement like when I was a kid there was this really naive right-wing neoconservative thing going on neoconservatism that was label lit pardon me neoconservatism was later marketed as neoliberalism but it started to do conservatism interesting case of rebranding or relabeling there the assumption was that if you took a prison operated by the government and then you privatized that that somehow this president would become better better and more efficient for society and the prisoners and everyone that was unbelievably Zhijun and just wrong I mean it just it didn't work we tried that for several decades we tried to privatize everything approach to neoliberalism neoconservatism and conservatism and it has failed so I mean sorry so your question very simply was well why can't we be like Denmark why can't we have the nice things Denmark have I think that is those are the very basic assumptions and I don't think I'm being unreasonable in saying that a conservative party a Republican party could come to could come to accept that kind of promise no all right so what's number two what is number two immigration / refugee policy this is where people think I'm really conservative because the left is never going to deal with it right so could we have it's not too much debt can we have a conservative party or a republican party that openly rejects and overturns the propaganda that infinite numbers of immigrants are good and wonderful for society that infant accepting infinite numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers is good for say can we have a conservative party republican party that just openly rejects that whole discourse because the left the left is never going to do it the left is is debating whether or not they should have entirely open borders it's a it's a that's become completely surreal on the left so sure I'm to a conservative party or a republican party never get tough on immigration stance get tough basically quit actually quit the current United Nations treaties and commitments to accepting refugees and and totally overturn the neoliberal tradition the neoliberal attitude towards towards immigration that's what I'm looking for and by the way I've actually not racist I mean I live in Taiwan right now I lived a large part of my adult life in Asia you know I grew up in downtown Toronto surrounded by basically every ethnic group that exists on earth Chileans and Jamaicans what have you but guess what when you look at really successful societies like Japan and Switzerland they've had a mature attitude towards immigration as opposed to basically going into a downward spiral of dealing with the guilt of colonial history trying to compensate by inviting representatives of the colonized people to come and live in your country and by the way like I get it I think that that's exactly what happened in England England was in this horrible position of having to look at the history of their empire and they're responsible for genocide and like three continents or more they say okay well now we'll make it all better by having um you know a little india in london and having a little jamaica and so on like as if it's it's somehow compensating for the history of what you did to india and what you did to jamaica as a colonial power or in a slave trading power and an opium trading power to now have neighborhoods of immigrants than London I get it I get the emotional and ideological function that has but any right right now looking at the president future of Canada it's it's just ridiculous to me to think that the future of these countries is continuously importing more more labor whether it's at the high end or thus or the low end of the get it i listening to an interview with in her yang earlier today in this brief interview said that immigration yes so that that's been tested empirically and it's factually false so uh I'm glad yeses I was I had a viewer send me an article send me a link to an article and I really considered doing a YouTube video about it but it was very boring and very difficult to explain the technical details but long story short the math has been done and the very simple fact is that when you when you examine the claims made by injury Anjum it's not only in react when you exam that claims made by andrew yang and some some academics that mechanization automation robots that that's responsible for loss of jobs it is factually false now if you want it in a form you can understand that hypothesis when you look at the manufacturing industry in Detroit is it the case that those jobs disappeared to Mexico because Mexico has a higher level of automation a higher level of they have better quality robots did the job to relocate elsewhere because of higher levels of automation mechanizations on no the jobs left because of lower wages in Mexico why did jobs relocate broadly those not just the car industry when you look across many industries why did jobs relocate from the United States to China is it because in China they have higher quality mechanization higher rates of automation no and there are methods we can use economically to really measure that to measure how many jobs disappeared because of robots in a word because of automation of mechanization how many disappeared because they moved elsewhere where wait are lower so those are measurable things in economics it's not surprising what else do economists have to do would make those kind of things and when you do the math and when you look at it no it is completely false but historically up to this part heard me historically up to this point what's happened under NAFTA the industrialization it is not due to put it this way deindustrialization was not caused by mechanization it was not caused by higher levels of information technology so you know another thing I point out is when you actually look at the numbers for General Motors it's actually amazing how few jobs left the United States Bernie Sanders uses those numbers where he says oh you know 30 percent of jobs with General Motors disappear during this period with you know permanent trade relations with China PNTR as those the term and it's gone as I wait a minute only 30% declines to soar that's from memory but it's something like that when you're actually going through even the Bernie Sanders claims about that but wait that's not all that bad and the reason is that the jobs that state in America were as you can imagine jobs really finances and design there were different kind of higher level jobs that remain for General Motors in the United States but the manufacturing jobs left and the numbers for that are surprising - so you know the fact that today people like designers and even you know people doing financial planning the fact that those people use computers the computers don't actually replace them the computers don't eliminate those jobs so that is a significant and interesting little digression here is to what extent to what extent is the threat of future automation real maybe we can debate that but historically up to this point economic what inter-gang is saying is completely false so and the the facts are out there for people who actually want to look into it ok ok so yeah but look you say let's come back here with your premise the original premise was the threat to our jobs is not immigration its mechanization well quantitatively also you can say as the fact the threat to our jobs is not immigration in the United States it was the jobs actually leaving the United States it was jobs actually leaving America for Mexico leaving America for China and that's part of the same calculus if people immigrate to the United States then they're paid the same wages as Americans they're not earning the same wages they would earn if they'd stayed in China so there is actually an underlying significant point though yeah okay yeah the other thing is I read an article the other day that you know I've heard about this about Japan that they have the declining population and more and more people there are the elderly population because yes huge huge issues which men correct yep well I was reading an article about Korea that Korea is also starting to experience this problem and that the birthrate is not replacing you know and they spoke highly of countries such as the United States and Canada because they have more open border policies yeah their population you know our population in America is continuing to grow and they don't contribute that to people ever here you know having more children it's great we have immigration policy that is allowing for more and more population growth so what do you what do you think about that okay so alright this is this is a great question I'm really happy to digress in this the Japanese model of the economy has advantages and disadvantages one of the advantages is that they have lower unemployment during a recession then we have during a boom just go to Google right now I think you can just do this on your computer babe just do Google Japan unemployment rate so currently Oh currently its way up at 2% 2% unemployment right but when you look back even look at the point so I mean you looking at the Lost Decade there in the 1990s right so that's that's supposedly this terrible period of the Japanese economy there was this unbelievable period of crisis and you know in some ways sincerely Silvanus day it was it was a real economic crisis can you imagine an economic crisis with two percent unemployment okay so okay now I just want to say I actually formally researched this when I was a university there have been false claims that Japan's unemployment numbers are somehow fake or fraudulent or that the government calculates it in a manner different from the United States of America I formerly wrote an essay about it I did the research and looked into that at university it wasn't a long essay short essay as I recall but no that's that's not true that that is a myth made up in the Western press because people feel jealous of the unemployment which people oh well they don't kill they don't do the math the same way we do their numbers don't count no when you look into it you can do the details the numbers count that really is the unemployment rate Japan is calculated the same way we calculate unemployment their unemployment rate is amazingly low okay so quality of education in Japan is very high unemployment rate is very low crime is almost zero again you can look into the crime statistics is shocking right Japan has a lot of advantages are there disadvantages yes like fascism a lot of Japanese are basically fascists about the Japanese are unbelievably racist and xenophobic and have authoritarian hierarchical attitudes that will show shock now you know I don't think there's a simple cause-and-effect relationship there you know you could obviously the history and culture of Japan is is unique in many ways so yeah it's an interesting question well put it this way how much do you want to be like Japan and how much do you want to be Denmark they're both very very positive examples we can learn from but I don't think it's a really simple question of just imitating Japan to the to the greatest extent possible but no any discourse about that a discourse about well sorry I also did I did a much longer essay about the history of immigration policy in Japan so just me I did specifically research that and I had an extreme left-wing professor hated me for doing it she gave me a low grade low by my standards you know and she really discouraged me from writing but because for her as a left-winger an essay dealing with the reality of immigration policy in Japan it was it was the opposite of everything she wanted to believe in you know she only wants she was she was one of people she believed in having no borders at all she wanted unlimited immigration all directions is that well here's here's what Japan did and here's how it worked out so yeah okay so one really brief thing about that I don't think of ever mention us on YouTube when you look at the statistics for immigration to Japan they're actually false the other way they are massively overstated Japan has much less immigration than the statistics indicate four very interesting historical reasons this is only one example it's the most important example they have a population of people who are ethnically Korean who live in Japan who have lived there continuously since before World War two so most of them now are born after World War two but they're the children and grandchildren and they remain legally foreigners in Japan by their own choice they chose to reject Japanese citizenship so every year often multiple times per year they're registered as new immigrants arriving in Japan even though they've been living there continuously since before World War two so they have actually massively inflated immigration numbers and for some person I did the math I was like okay well how many immigrants are there if we delete these false and misleading categories of immigrants who are not really new immigrants and yes it is it is close to zero they are an extremely low immigration society you can see that already when you look at the statistics but then if you break down the category statistics yeah it's even it's even lower I think there's an interesting hypothetical question to ask you know is is London England better off as a city because it's become a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic multilingual City is that better than if London England had remained ninety percent you know British people that's an interesting question however the question we're asking now is given that you already are a cosmopolitan city it's already it's already done what what's the occupant for more immigration and for more refugees like people welcoming in all of the people from Afghanistan whose country has been destroyed by CIA policy look at slide did you if you open the doors to everyone who'd like to escape Afghanistan it's gonna be a lot of people and you know Afghanistan and Syria and so on and in Iraq that's these are not small numbers of people this will be waves and waves and waves that will transform the future of your society so I just say we're not starting from the 19th century we're starting from the Year 2019 and you know I don't really see any sincere discourse on the left or the right that looks at Vancouver Canada today to use the Canadian exam looks at Vancouver and thinks wow you know what this city needs this city needs more Asian immigration that's what's going to improve the city we got it okay we already I speak Chinese very Pro Chinese in my view of the world believe me I'm very biased in favor of Chinese immigrants I like Chinese immigrants walk tonight like white people I really do my biases that way however I've lived in China I've lived in Taiwan I've lived in Vancouver I think you've got to be insane to be looking well what we need right now is another half million Chinese immigrants or even immigrants specifically from from Taiwan it makes no sense to me economically culturally politically or or in any other way and obviously that will get me banned from woke Twitter they'll get me I mean John sac ours is not gonna hang out with me anymore it's really really as James John Julius II achieved a you know I was at that dance party John I saw you sitting there pathetically by the side of the dance floor sitting there hola he was he's a mochi he's a mochi guy John his communism has not made impact in life that's that's my proposal is so those those the three issues those the three issues so now I want to mention two things that that the cute the two biggest obstacles that prevent me from ever wearing the conservative name first first one you can guess you for a million times indigenous people First Nations Native Americans right it's a huge issue so you guys may not know this Bernie Sanders book it's just off camera here here we go Bernie Sanders book our revolution it does have a chapter on Native Americans it does have a it's a short chapter but there is a chapter in here that says I'm Bernie Sanders I care about Native Americans I always have Oh as well you know it didn't tells a bunch of anecdotes about the time you went to visit this and that Indian Reservation and talked to the Chiefs and so you know so there is a chapter in here on that there's really no way I can ever support a conservative party or a bogan party if they don't very clear stand on First Nations people First Nations languages what the future of that is supposed to be you know ensure the history matters a little bit you know if you want to have national saw read a like like Australia has the apology for the peasant I'm not I'm not really into the past I'm really into the future I really want to pull commitment from yes most people that run the Conservative Party would be in favor of your language revitalisation right right so that's right well okay but that compared to I mean I'm glad I did I'm glad I did point to as point three there but I did point to last I think that can be linked in a powerful and meaningful way to the skepticism about immigration and in refugee policy right where you say look Canadian identity isn't isn't English identity what really matters is the fate of the crea ghibli the Mohawk and then questioning you know if we keep having more and more waves of new immigrants from China and Asia and Africa how are those people going to participate and isn't this just gonna complete the genocide of our native people and languages so I think you can revive those languages and start to make that a bulwark of saying well there's some there's some kind of identity or culture or historical continuum here that you're trying to conserve I mean you call yourself a Conservative Party what the hell is that you're trying to conserve not a JIP way culture apparently right not the Ojibwe language so it gives conservatives something to conserve it's kind of a weird positive and yeah I think it does connect to that that question also because I I don't think you have a leg to stand on if your point is that you want to you want to reduce immigration so that you can preserve the hockey league you know ice hockey is forever anyone can immigrate to Canada tomorrow and participate in the hockey league not just anyone can immigrate to Canada and actually learn in Korea or a Jib way or connect to that history or that culture of that language currently there are no schools for you to study those languages and trust me I would know I have a long email correspondence with all the universities about just how hard it is to learn those languages in Canada okay and then the other point you also could guess from the name of this YouTube channels this is my point to you on my two pointless four I wouldn't end up with a Conservative Party is separation of church and state if the Conservatives can't really commit to getting over this connection they have to Jesus and abortion I'm Ellen I can't be a part because at all you know if the Conservative Party or the Republican Party remains the party of Christian theocracy I can't I can't have anything to do with it and that's that's probably easier for Americans to deal with and Canadians because at least in America you guys do have a constitution that sets down in principle the separation of church and state you know Constitution also supports the progress of science over religion and stuff but that's that's asking a lot for the from the conservative party and if they do that if they take an aggressively secular stance that will let them finally get rid of the homophobia issue in the party right because as long as you're the party of traditional Christian values then you're the party of homophobia you're the party that's opposed to legal abortion there's there are a lot of real limitations to what conservative can ever mean or be in practice as long as you're connected to that so it would be convenient even if it were completely cynical for conservatives and Republicans just say look we're drawing a line and from now on who is who is less Christian than Donald Trump you know it's really true and for me I'm old enough to remember Bill Clinton when he would go to church and there was this news footage of him and his wife standing there with glowing the faces in church I mean it's completely cynical who on earth is less Christian than you know Bill Clinton and his wife Donald Trump is less Christian Donald Trump is the East Christian person I know and I'm an atheist Jew ex Buddhists okay okay babe let's wrap it up there thanks for hanging in with me for you in the audience you know if you thought this was an insincere discourse in any way I just remind you when you live in a political system that has only two alternatives if you're sincerely interested in political progress you've got to take an interest in reforming and revitalizing both I would love to see a reform and revitalization of the conservative tendency if only because that would then force more better ideas that are progress on whatever the 80 conservative tendency is I definitely do not want to live in a society where political discourse is a meaningless debate between Christian conservatives and crypto communists [Music]