Redistributing Wealth: Kristen Leo is Wrong.

if musicians wanted to genuinely be
controversial why not make a song about redistributing wealth and property that would be a really controversial song obviously that's not a song that would ever be played on the radio not a song that would ever be allowed to reach the ears of the mainstream population because that is not a theme in a song that is allowed to exist in our minds and we are not allowed to consider the concept of weight there is a minuscule amount of people that have hoarded the majority of property and money on our planet and they are not really sharing it with anyone else and do they really have the right to hoard all of this money and property and is this fair and are we okay with that our mind is not even allowed to go there and to think whether that is a good idea or not and i do believe that i mean it's a very random example that i'm giving but you can totally if you're a good audience if you are a talented artist you can definitely make a song about that and make it a hit i just i can't get myself into that left wing conspiracy theory mindset i don't know why i am not morally opposed to land redistribution it could be a very positive thing for canada it could be a very positive thing for greece the same way it was a positive thing for south korea and cambodia but what i'm opposed to is the left-wing rhetoric about land redistribution land redistribution does not create a more equal society what land redistribution demonstrates to us is the naked natural fact of how inequality emerges from equal starting conditions again and again and again not here to debate whether or not redistribution of land ownership could become a top 10 hit record that's a great idea shout out to kristen leo make it happen we started drafting lyrics for hits we're like hey we can take the beat from [ __ ] and we can record new lyrics on it talking about redistributional land ownership why not you kristen step up get on the mic it doesn't even have to be a parody you can do a deadpan serious song on redistribution of land ownership we're not here to debate whether or not there's a conspiracy in the music industry that would prevent you from having a hit song about redistribution of energy i i just i can't get myself into that left wing conspiracy theory mindset i don't know why in fact i kind of suspect that grimes might come out with a song on exactly that topic in the next six months you know i think there are plenty of left-wing artists who tried you know when there were people like bob dylan there have been some there have been some examples in the past there's been some john lennon songs that leads that radical but that we're hits on so i it's a weak argument we're not here to talk about landis redistribution a musical theme in the music industry we're here to talk about land redistribution as such if you've been watching my channel for a long time you know not my first video made on this topic maybe the fourth maybe the fifth it would be very hard for me to put together a playlist of all the times talking about this because it came up in passing when i was talking about other other subjects any real any super fans of the photographic memory send in suggestions we could put together a playlist not the first video minute topic and this is not going to be the last people keep asking about this i think for a really good reason redistribution of land ownership is fundamentally pro-capitalist and yet it is misapprehended by shallow self-indulgent poorly educated people like kristin leo as if it were anti-capitalists and that makes it interesting even if it were a terrible idea that really makes it very interesting worth talking about and you know what as it happens it's not such a terrible idea it really is worth talking about and it's worth learning from empirical examples in the real history of the world south korea south korea is as pro-american and pro-capitalist as it gets land risk land okay now i got to put in that it land redistribution was a crucial aspect of the transition from the japanese occupy occupation period to the pro-american period they're after when they were liberated from japan 100 percent pro-capitalist in principle and in practice cambodia you ever heard you ever heard of this small country in southeast asia cambodia land redistribution was not part of communism in cambodia communism is about centralizing the ownership of the means of production you heard of this right communism took land ownership away from everyone and in many cases the poor suffered much more than the rich when the lamb was taking women babe you got the book this is a fantastic book i haven't read yet but i heard a long interview with the uh with the author recommend this book i recommend it unread on the basis of the interview but i bought a copy that's the tragic terrible history of what happened when the communist party in china took land ownership away from everyone when they lost faith in communism in cambodia when they lost faith in the centralized ownership of the means of production when communism broke down and fell to pieces after more than one million people died maybe it's more than two million topic for another video what did they do they took parcels of the land and they handed it out to you and you and you and you in theory everybody in the country got a parcel of land and became a land owner and a farmer do you think that's the end of the story do you think we can just hit stop and say and that's it south korea sold all of its problems forever there were never poor people in south korea ever again there were never poor people and rich people there was no inequality because they redistributed landers do you think that's what happened in cambodia i think yes and when i lived in cambodia there were no poor people and there were no rich people and nobody oppressed him because they redistributed land no what i'm fighting against here is not one simple misconception but the habit of mind that resists engaging in a full life cycle analysis right the left wing mind insists on saying if you just take away land from the rich and give it to the poor problem solve end of story there's a refusal to think ahead as several more dominoes fall in sequence there's a refusal to think ahead step by step over the next few years over the next two decades over the next few generations what are the consequences and again it's not all hypothetical what were the consequences in south korea what were the consequences in cambodia and guess what to quote odb this ain't something new that just came out of nowhere no this is something old it's in aristotle it's in the hebrew bible both aristotle and the old testament contain discussions of how to cope with the fact that with time even if you distribute land equally to everyone land ownership will become more and more unequal meaning what a small number of farmers become wealthier and wealthier and buy up the land of the larger number of farmers who get poorer and poorer there are winners and losers even if you regard winning and losing as random and arbitrary and not linked to your own personal virtue in any way in agriculture especially this tends to be the case some people just make decisions that result in them wanting to opt out of farming they decide hey you know what i'd rather sell my farm take this money and pay for university tuition so i can become a dentist or they say i'm going to take my pharma i'm going to go to the bank and ask for a loan so that my own son can go to university and become a dentist and get out of farming that's maybe the happiest way that poor people end up losing their land and the rich take over there are so many more unhappy possibilities someone decides hey you know what too many people are already farming mangoes there's no money in mango farming i'm going to cut down my mango trees and start farming garlic i can wait make way more money for farming little they know there's a new free trade agreement between thailand cambodia and china all of a sudden chinese garlic enters the market the value of garlic local locally goes down chinese garlic is one tenth the price of locally farmed garlic within thailand and cambodia something totally out of your control something you didn't foresee coming and of course with agriculture ultimately it is man against the sun man against the seasons man against the rain clouds and the weather some people are lucky and some people are unlucky even without getting into the fact that yes some people become alcoholics some people become gamblers some people are stupid or just don't have the knack for farming that other people have so there are winners and losers if you start with a map divided into cute little squares of equal size plots of land and you give everyone an equal piece of land within just a few years within just five years just think as the dominoes fall a few people make bad bets a few people make bad decisions a few farmers go broke and then other farmers buy their land there you go the successful farmer in one year can double the size of his land within five years we have 10 times 20 times as much land as the other farmers and one by one there are other farmers going bankrupt when i was working in cambodia i did research on people who came down with serious illnesses including tuberculosis there were people who sold all their farmland just to have access to medical care because they were very slowly dying of tuberculosis most most forms of tuberculosis they don't kill you quick so you have you know one family that came down with tuberculosis they end up bankrupt and landless and there's another family they'll say they weren't any better at farming just the luck of the draw they didn't get tb and they end up doubling the amount of land they have and in the real world if we were to redistribute land ownership here in canada right now there are huge corporations like cargill that can come along and say hey this is a cute little plot of land you got here what's your plan you're going to build a log cabin you're going to build a hut you're going to spend 10 20 years of your life trying to get some pear trees to grow fruit and like maybe earn back the cost of the investment and building the log out maybe if you sell your land to us we're this huge heartless corporation we can do mass monocrop agriculture we can use the land more efficiently more profitably you can move to vancouver move into a condominium maybe put yourself through school and become a dentist you can have very rapidly if you redistribute land ownership in a mature economy like canada a huge percentage of people you give land to will give that land away they will sell it to a corporation that can do mass monocrop agriculture that has the technology and the organization to do large-scale dehumanizing not at all quaint commercially competitive agriculture and also people just turn around and hand it to the bank they say oh great thanks for this plot of land but i always wanted to be a barber so i'm gonna you know offer this as collateral to the bank and then i'm gonna move to the city and open my barber shop or whatever the hell it is they want to do these are fundamental reasons why pretty much all governments in the western world look at redistributing income redistributing money redistributing access to opportunities like scholarships to go to university for free instead of redistributing land ownership because incredibly few people have the husba frankly to go out and work their fingers to the bone trying to make a plot of land even feed themselves let alone profitable and effective in feeding the whole society how many of you in the audience really want to go back to school and many of you you might want to go back to school to study aristotle now that i've told you this fascinating thing about them but you probably don't want to go back to texas a m you probably don't want to study the hard science of agriculture and put yourself through the paces of learning how to take dirt and rock and turn it into a profitable farm it's not easy i say again i am not morally opposed to land redistribution it could be a very positive thing for canada it could be a very positive thing for greece the same way it was a positive thing for south korea and cambodia but what i'm opposed to is the left-wing rhetoric about land redistribution land redistribution does not create and more equal society what land redistribution demonstrates to us is the naked natural fact of how inequality emerges from equal starting conditions again and again and again that's why even aristotle and even the old testament talked about land redistribution as something you'd have to do every 50 years or every 10 years or every 5 years if you really wanted to have an equal society but what kind of equal society do you really want to have even aristotle was more sophisticated than these left wingers do you really want equality of land ownership living in a republic where everyone grows their own lentils or do you want to have equality in political power is that what matters the equality of political rights the equality of educational opportunity that wasn't too sophisticated for aristotle to get his head around 2000 years ago here we are in the year 2020 in some ways still catching up with aristotle