John Hope Bryant (2:51)
That'S odoo.com welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Yo, yo, yo. This is John Hope Bryan. And this is Money and Wealth, which is my weekly pulpit of finance. And I'm very excited to bring this week's exciting episode to you. And it is on, well, sort of an obvious topic, but a topic that I'm convinced people are confused about and no one talks about except talking at it, around it, accusing it, throwing rocks at it, sometimes hating it. It's capitalism. What is it, what it isn't, and why it matters to you. So we're going to unpack today. Capitalism. I'm really excited about this topic and making it real for my audience. For you. You and I are going to have a very real conversation. People blame capitalism for things capitalism didn't do and ignore what it actually can do as a result. So I grew up poor. Not so poor. We couldn't afford the or, as I sometimes joke, but we were poor. We were so broke we couldn't pay attention. We fought over money. Mom and dad fought over money. That's what caused their divorce. We had a lot of assets that we lost it all. But I was certainly in the hood. I might not have been of the hood, thanks to my mother who told me she loved me every day of my life, and my dad, who owned a business. So I had a sense of yes, I am and yes, I can. So I was broke, but I wasn't poor. There's a. There's a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is economic. Being poor is a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of your spirit. You must vow, we must vow never, ever, ever to be poor again. Can I get an amen on that? So I was in the hood. I wasn't of the hood, but I had these recurring interactions, these recurring head bumps, trip ups with and around the topic of money. So this episode is going to unpack the thing that I learned the hard way that people in my church told me was evil. The little church I grew up in, Deep South Central, they said money was evil. I'm sure many of you have been told that if you grew up certainly in a black household, money's not evil. It's the love of money that's evil. Money is not evil. It's the love of money that's evil. This episode is about unpacking that thing called capitalism. Let me tell you what it's not about. This episode is not about politics or theory. It's about the rules of the game you're already playing every day. Whether you like it or not, you're in this game. If you aren't mastering it, it's playing you. So let's jump into segment one of this episode, what capitalism actually is. Capitalism equals private ownership plus free exchange. Call that free enterprise plus rules of engagement plus trust. I'm gonna repeat that in one sentence. Capitalism equals private ownership plus free exchange plus rules plus trust. Some of you heard me break down topics that are misunderstood, like banking. What's banking? It's a trust business really. It's not about the money. What is money? A means of exchanging value. So we over index on getting that bag, getting that cash, getting that money, getting that dollar. All that is is a means of exchanging value in and of itself. Literally means nothing. What's credit? It comes from the Latin word credito, which means loosely defined, loosely translated, I'm sorry, credibility. What is capitalism? It comes from the Latin root word capitas, which loosely defined is knowledge in the head. I'm giving you knowledge about the capitalism that's been the modern version of knowledge in the head in an exchange in a society of value and aspiration and success. And again, capitalism equals private ownership plus free exchange plus rules plus trust. So banking is not about money, it's about trust. Credit, credit access is not about money or debt. That's about credibility. Right? And I'm about to give you the knowledge about capitalism. So not a belief system, it's not a religion, it's a system of incentives. Capitalism is just people trading value. You already practice it every day. You're going to the gas station, you're going to the nail salon, you're picking up your kids from daycare. They're not taking care of your oftentimes unruly children for free. If they are, it's your grandma or your auntie or somebody doing it for fee because they love you. For free, because they love you. Not a fee, because they have a relationship with you that's arm's length and sometimes even your family will charge you money. You're going to pay a toll on the, on the highway. You're getting your hair done. You're all these things that happen all day and all night is an exchange of value. You just don't recognize it as such. I'm gonna get deeper into that in a minute. Let me break down some core mechanics of capitalism. Ownership, investment, risk, reward, competition, innovation. Capitalism is not about money, it's about choices. Now, before I get into what capitalism is not, let me give you a really basic example of capitalism in action. So imagine a table right in front of you. There's a table right in front of you. And on one side of that table is an economic producer, a producer of some product. And on the other side of that table is a consumer, a consumer of products, and particularly in this example, a consumer of that product. Let's call one the capitalist and let's call one the consumer. The capitalist's job in this example is to extract as much value as they can from you while giving you the least amount of value in return. That's his or her job. The person on the other side of the table, the consumer, their job is to pay the least amount to the capitalist while extracting the most amount of value out of the capitalist. Don't hate the consumer, don't hate the capitalist. They're just doing their jobs. A good negotiation is where everybody leave, everyone leaves the table slightly annoyed. I'm going to repeat that, okay? Capitalism is a table. One is the capitalist is on one side, consumers on the other. The capitalist's job is to extract as much value from you money, in this example, as they can price value of their goods while giving you the least amount of value in return. The consumer's job is to extract the most value they can from while providing the lease in payment for that good or service. And when you have a good negotiation, everybody leaves the table slightly annoyed, but they're cool with what went down. So in third world countries, in developing countries, often in small villages in Africa or Latin America, certainly I can speak about Africa. You're negotiating in Asia, you know, small places, in small towns, in provinces in Asia, you're negotiating the cost of that banana or that fruit or vegetable or that trinket. You're buying your horse trading, as they would call the phrase in a modern economy, that price has already been set by researchers who've done market research and pretty much determined what the consumer is willing to pay for that thing. And we, I mean, nothing has any value except the value that we ascribe to it. So a comb has value because it gets the kink out of your hair or styles your hair. And we're willing to pay X dollars in exchange for the value of either styling our hair or getting the kink out of it. And somebody did enough research to ascertain that the decent price for that comb or that brush is somewhere between 3 bucks and 30 bucks. And depending on the styling and all that stuff, that's what we're willing to pay for it. I have a sty. I had a sty in my eye. I got it. I'm, you know, running really, really hard, really fast. It might be that I was a little tired, didn't get enough rest, and so maybe my immune system was lower than it should be. But I'm. I'm convinced I got some pebble or something or some sand in my eye or went. Something blew in my eye on my way to a trip out of the country to. In the Caribbean, and my eye blew up like a watermelon. When I got to the humidity of the Barbados, the Caribbean island I was going to for a speech and an award from giving some love Gabu organization, the Gabu Awards. And very great, very good event that I went to and thankful for the award. And I had to manage that with ice or a cold pack and hot water. And cold water against a towel to reduce the swelling, but also to open up the eyelid where the stye was so that it would heal. Now you say, well, that was free. That's nature. Well, no, I actually paid for the water because I was in the hotel, right? And you can't get hot water unless there's a heating system. And so when I paid for the hotel room, or in this case, my sponsor did, the sponsor of the event, they were paying for the certainty that I'd get hot water and cold water when I turned on the faucet at the sink. Then we went and bought a little salve for this dye. I just gave it away. I asked the guy at the hotel, could you find XYZ for this dye? And he went to the pharmacist and brought it back. And is very kind, but I tipped the gentleman who brought it back. So he did it for free, sort of. But he's being paid by the hotel. And he sort of knew he was going to get an incentive from me, which was the tip. And I certainly paid the pharmacist. So you see what I'm saying? Even this medical care is an exchange of good and service. And yes, the sty is going away. I say that because also on social media, people saw me on TV on CNBC and thought that I was having some medical situation, so no, I wasn't. Thanks for your care. I just had this thing that's thankful. Thank God it's going away. You can see it a little bit still now, but it's mostly going away. But even medical care involves capitalism and free enterprise. Now let me. And I'm going to deal with socialism and communism in a different podcast. I want to stay focused on what this is, okay? What capitalism is not. It's not exploitation. Now let's deal with good capitalism and bad capitalism. Okay? Good capital capitalism is where I benefit and you benefit more. I gave an example of a comb, a brush, buying an automobile. So you buy it by going back to value. You're buying a Toyota that has. You're willing to pay X dollars for it. You're buying a Cadillac a little bit more, A Mercedes a little bit more. A Bentley a little bit more Rolls Royce. Right? Little bit more. Same price of Bentley, whatever. But these are all automobiles. Right? But we ascribe a value to these different things. They're willing to pay more for them. As I said, nothing has any value except the value that we ascribe to it. It's handmade, it's this and that. It's got this kind of materials, this kind of styling. That's all personal preference and free will. So good capitalism is where I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a price for it. Slavery is an example of bad capitalism. Robbery, murder and mayhem. Well, robbery and mayhem, theft. Let's make this really very specific. Is an example of bad capitalism or examples of bad capitalism? Slavery was one of the most horrendous examples of bad capitalism. What, black slavery? When the Jews went through the Holocaust, it wasn't just that Hitler and his cronies hated the Jews. They hated them in part because they thought they were resentful of them, actually, because they were at the height of social status at that time. They were in the government. They were free enterprise. They were really good at being well in business, and I applaud them for that, actually. We shouldn't be jealous of them. We should want to emulate those qualities and become as good as they are, if we can. But Hitler decided to change the script and suggest that he was better than them and they were better than them and so on and so forth. And they isolated them, separated them, made them subhuman. Perceive people's minds. Anyway, what's the point of all this? When they took them away, they didn't just Take them away and burn everything. They took them away and they robbed them of everything. They took the, the. My wife and I sha went to Auschwitz in Poland on the 80th anniversary. I think we single handedly raised the percentage of blacks in Poland that week. Me and Van Jones and Robert Smith and a few folks. I think it was like, you know, 10 of us and I didn't see any of the black people while we're there. And I'm not even joking. Great country though. And, and we were just moved by what we saw. But anyway, the point is that they took the teeth out of the fillings out and melted them and sold it. They took the artwork and stole it. They took the houses and possessed them. They took the jewelry, I already mentioned jewelry. I think they took the furs and conscribed them to themselves or sold them or traded them. And so it was again economic exploitation based on economic jealousy. And that was bad capitalism. We all know the stories of stolen labor, 400 years or 270 years of black free labor that helped to build America. Okay, so good capitalism is what we're talking about. Bad capitalism is what we want to avoid. So good capitalism is what I'm talking about. And I have a book coming out next year by the way, little free game here called Capitalism for All. Subtitle is Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America. So you're the first to hear about this. The book is not out, you can't find it anywhere yet. Can't even pre order it. But I'm giving you a heads up that it's coming and it's coming out on the 250th anniversary of America, which is next year. So let's again get back into what this is. Good capitalism is not exploitation. It's not a system for wealthy elites only. Okay? It's not the same as racism or greed. So let's go back to the racism. It's not a system for wealthy elites only. Some people say I hate capitalism. Sorry. No, I'm sorry, maybe be more specific. I hate rich people. I hear that from some of my liberal, all of them poor friends. And my response to them is no, you don't, you don't hate rich people. You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that no matter how hard you work and how hard you hustle, you can't seem to succeed. And so you assume that it must be a gamed system and the people at the top must be the gamers and they must be doing it unethically, illegally, they must be cheating because you're working your tail off and you can't seem to get ahead and you work in two jobs. And I get it. I do understand. And capitalism has done a horrible job of marketing itself and making itself available to the least of these God's children. And most all legitimate wealth in this country, by the way, came from the poor. Another podcast for another time, but Goldman Sachs was a guy named Goldman and a guy named Sachs. Two Jewish young gentlemen came in, really run out of Europe who are selling financial services door to door and literally could not get a job anywhere in any of the skyscrapers. In high finance, people sort of turn their nose up at the kind of finance these gentlemen wanted to do, which was alternative finance. And they really held out. They just went selling financial services door to door, hung up their own shingle and that ultimately, ultimately became what we now know to be the heralded institution called Goldman Sachs. Similar stories can be told about a dozen, two dozen, three dozen additional companies. Walmart with Sam Walton with a pickup truck in the storefront. And Motown was created by Barry Gordy. You know, you know, from nothing, it goes on. It goes on and goes on. So most legitimate wealth come from poor people. A big company was once a small one. It's just this generation that is wealth has created wealth or finance. Well, money can make more money on money than money can ever make on labor. So you have this strange situation now where money is making money on money and soon technology and money are going to come together or is coming together, which is a whole new phenomena. But the fundamentals of how you come up are the same. And we have pulled up the ladder as a society from those at the bottom who are really the generators of economic energy. If you go to my website for John Hope Bryant Enterprises, soon to be renamed briangroupventures.com but you go to my website, you'll see it says basically my, My mandate is to unleash untapped human potential at scale that I think that you are the product. I think that you are the reason this country is succeeding and every country succeeds. Wherever you are around the world, 70% of GDP, gross domestic product is consumer spending. That's you and me paying for again, getting your nails done, going to gas stations, going to restaurants, going on vacations, paying rent, mortgages, car notes. But you don't get the respect you deserve. And you, you certainly aren't getting the help. And I'm trying to give you respect and help can I get an amen.
