Against Socialism with Keith Knight

Summary

Podcast Summary: Part Of The Problem

Episode: Against Socialism with Keith Knight

Host: Dave Smith
Guest: Keith Knight
Date: July 24, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features Dave Smith in conversation with Keith Knight, focusing on a deep critique of democratic socialism. The discussion is spurred by Keith’s recent video, “64 Arguments Against Democratic Socialism," which Dave lauds as a “four-hour masterpiece.” Together, they explore core arguments against socialism, analyze the motivations of modern democratic socialists, and highlight the superiority of voluntary, market-based systems over coercive state-led interventions. The conversation is also peppered with references to real-world events, economic philosophy, and the challenges of debating those who rarely clearly define their terms.

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Main Themes & Discussion Points

1. Why the Debate Now? The Rise of Democratic Socialism

[01:07 – 05:15]

• Dave introduces Keith Knight, emphasizing his unique ability to synthesize and destroy the case for democratic socialism with dozens of arguments.
• Keith notes alignment with democratic socialists opposing foreign intervention and wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran), but sees a contradiction: socialists acknowledge that government intervention (e.g., restricting gas and oil supply) raises prices, but don't apply this logic elsewhere.
• Quote [04:00, Keith]:
  “Democratic socialists were humble enough to say, you know, it looks like coercive government intervention, limiting the supply that's available to the market, drastically increased the cost of this product to everyone in the economy. This is contrary to the view that high prices are the result of greed and corporations being privately owned.”

2. The Failure to Clearly Define Democratic Socialism

[10:11 – 16:36]

• Dave and Keith highlight how most high-profile socialists (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani) struggle or refuse to precisely define what democratic socialism means, often offering platitudes instead of specifics.
• Contrasts are drawn between intellectual socialists (like Bhaskar Sunkara or Richard Wolff, who call for worker ownership) and mainstream figures, who simply advocate more government welfare.
• Dave finds this “slippery” and questions how to debate when the target keeps moving.
• Quote [12:37, Dave]:
  “It’s like trying to wrestle a giant slippery egg… because you’re not explaining what it is that you stand for.”
• Keith suggests a more accurate definition would be the outlawing of employer-employee contracts—something rarely stated aloud.

3. The Myth of "Free" Public Goods

[18:23 – 22:46]

• Keith discusses the misconception of “free” goods, like libraries or public schools, which are paid for coercively (taxes), not truly free.
• Draws the analogy: calling government schools or the military “free” is misleading, as taxpayers fund these services under duress.
• Argues prices and voluntary exchange are vital for rational allocation, incentivizing quality and efficiency.

4. The Incentive Problem—Why Markets Work and Socialism Doesn’t

[25:48 – 33:41]

• Keith identifies self-interest as a fundamental motivator the right understands, but socialists wish away.
• Regulation, high taxation, and intervention stifle the incentive to produce, contract, and innovate.
• Raises key questions for socialists (via Dave): Why, if capitalists are always pressed to pay as little as possible, do most workers earn more than minimum wage? Why do prices often fall in the real world, despite “greedy” businesses?
• Keith points to “time prices”—how much time it takes the average person to obtain goods—showing increasing accessibility of goods, contradicting the “rich get richer, poor get poorer” narrative.

5. The Misplaced Faith in Human Nature and the State

[33:41 – 42:03]

• Dave notes that capitalism works with, not against, human nature (i.e., redirecting self-interest to serve society).
• Keith offers the “Donald Trump test”—bad actors are far more dangerous in control of the state than in the private sector; in the market, self-interest is only rewarded when others benefit, while in the state, it produces destruction.
• Quote [36:58, Keith]:
  “If we have a nefarious actor, are they more detrimental to society in the voluntary sector or in the coercive sector of politics?”

6. The Surplus Value Fallacy and Labor Theory of Value

[43:33 – 54:10]

• Keith and Dave attack the Marxist idea that employers “exploit” workers by reaping surplus value.
• They note this logic fails as it ignores voluntariness and ignores business losses (where employers lose money, “workers” are the surplus extractors).
• Dave asserts the labor theory of value is simply proven wrong; value is created through collaboration (capital, product, risk, and labor).
• Quote [46:57, Dave]:
  “The labor theory of value is just objectively wrong… it’s the clouds cause viruses; no, it’s not, it’s germs.”

7. Voluntary Solutions and the Limits of Good Intentions

[54:10 – 62:03]

• Keith suggests an honest test of a socialist’s intentions: Are they open to voluntary solutions, even as interim steps, before government coercion?
• Cites examples: self-education online, cooperative businesses, voluntary mutual aid.
• Most socialists, he argues, dismiss these in favor of coercive state provision, betraying a “domestic imperialist” mindset.
• Both note the dramatic reduction in global poverty (due to voluntary exchange and property rights), a fact ignored by socialist narratives.

8. The True Core: Statism vs. Voluntarism

[62:03 – 69:54]

• Dave explains that the disagreement isn’t really about whether healthcare or education are good—everyone values these. The real split is statism (compulsory) vs. voluntarism (consensual).
• Cites Gene Epstein’s argument: if worker co-ops are better, persuade people and build them—no one is stopping you from voluntary socialism. The fact that violence (state action) is always needed proves a lack of public buy-in.
• Quote [63:17, Dave]:
  “All you have to do is convince like a percentage of the workers of America to only shop at worker owned businesses… But the bottom line is that you know you can’t… you don’t even want to try.”

9. The Moral Heart: The "Against Me" Argument

[65:55 – 72:25]

• Keith presents Stefan Molyneux’s “Against Me!” challenge: would you consent to use violence if someone refuses to fund your desired government program?
• Most people recoil at using violence for non-crimes, revealing they don’t truly believe in the moral legitimacy of state coercion for “public goods.”
• Dave draws a parallel with the civil rights movement—abstract support for a bad law vs. visceral reaction to its violent enforcement.
• “If I simply defend myself and say I’m not going… they will kill me in front of my children. That is what you support. That’s the system you support.” [Dave, 69:54]

10. Hypocrisy: Leftists’ Trust in the War-Making State

[72:25 – 77:09]

• Keith points out profound hypocrisy: socialists condemn the state as genocidal, militaristic, and corrupt—yet suggest expanding its power over ever more of life.
• Dave lampoons the idea of solving institutional evil by making the same institution all-powerful in new domains (“put the Bloods in charge”).
• Concludes that liberty and voluntary exchange are the only moral and functional solutions; coercive intervention inevitably leads to violence, stagnation, and abuse.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Failure to Define:
  "We are sitting here saying we believe in private property rights and laissez faire government. We're being very clear on what it is we believe in and they are not. And that's frustrating." – Dave Smith [14:41]

• On the Coercion of "Free" Services:
  "Once you say something should be free, the military, healthcare, housing, you've already lied and said something that costs trillions of dollars a year is free." – Keith Knight [20:19]

• On Market Incentives:
  "They have to first meet our consumer demand. That's why most companies try to build products and services and distribute them to as many people as possible." – Keith Knight [21:41]

• On Statism vs. Voluntarism:
  "What we said at the beginning is like, hey, let's just define our terms. Let's admit what the disagreement here is really about... You are arguing for statism. Like that's, that's the core of the disagreement." – Dave Smith [57:38]

• On the Moral Heart:
  "Would you be justified in putting me in a cage afterward?... What if I don’t want to chip in for the current educational system... do you have the right to use violence against me if I don’t chip in for those? And then the excuses start to pile on." – Keith Knight [65:55]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:07] – Episode/Guest Introduction, Purpose of Debate
• [04:00] – Agreement with Socialists on Foreign Policy; Questioning Economic Consistency
• [10:11] – The Problem with Defining Democratic Socialism
• [18:23] – The Library & "Free" Goods Fallacy
• [25:48] – Self-Interest and Capitalism vs. Socialism
• [33:41] – Capitalism, Selfishness, and Government Power
• [43:33] – The Surplus Value and Labor Theory of Value Myths
• [54:10] – Voluntary vs. Coercive Solutions
• [62:03] – Statism vs. Voluntarism; The Gene Epstein Challenge
• [65:55] – The "Against Me!" and Moral Core of Libertarianism
• [72:25] – Hypocrisy: Trusting the War-Making State with More Power
• [77:09] – Closing Remarks & Recommendations

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Conclusion / Final Thoughts

With humor, passion, and philosophical rigor, Dave Smith and Keith Knight dismantle both the practical and moral claims of democratic socialism. They challenge listeners—especially those sympathetic to socialism—to deeply examine whether their ideals require violence, whether voluntary action is truly off the table, and if the same state deemed criminal abroad could really be trusted at home.

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Recommendations

• Watch Keith Knight’s “64 Arguments Against Democratic Socialism.”
• Consult Keith’s book “Domestic Imperialism” for arguments that “attack the left from the left.”
• Explore debates with Gene Epstein, Richard Wolff, and Bhaskar Sunkara for contrast.

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For those new or skeptical, this episode lays out the libertarian critique with clarity and passion, urging listeners to consider not just good intentions, but the real mechanisms and morality behind their beliefs.

Transcript

[Dave Smith]

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[Dave Smith]

What's up everybody? Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem. Thank you so much as always for tuning in. Couple quick announcements before we get the show started. July 28th, I will be out in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Young Americans for Liberty Yalcon on be giving a a speech there that night. So looking forward to that. I don't know. I know a bunch of other people are coming through, but I'm not sure who's coming on what days or, or whatever. But I'll be there on July 28th and then that weekend, which would be not this very coming weekend but the one after that, July 30th and 31st. Me and Robbie the fire will be out slinging some jokes in Fort Lauderdale at the uh, uh, Rhea. I'm sorry, wait, no. Is that whatever the improv comedy out there. Comicdesmith.com Dania beach improv. I apologize. The Dania Beach Improv out there right outside of Fort Lauderdale. Comicdavesmith.com and then we got a bunch more coming up. Appleton, Wisconsin, Austin, Texas at the mothership. Louisville, Fort Worth, Dallas, all coming up. Comicdavesmith.com for all of those ticket links. All right, we got a good one for you today. We got my buddy Keith Knight back on the show. I'm sure most, most of you guys know Keith at this point, but if you do not, you really should familiarize yourself with him. You know I just mentioning the other day both to you privately and then on the, on the podcast this Keith just put out this video that is 64, 64 arguments against democratic socialism. It's phenomenal. It's. I, I told Scott Horton when I was, I was like in the middle of watching it and I told him, I go, and this is literally, I thought as I was watching it, I go, there are moments with, with Keith where I watch you and I just go, no man, he is just the best at this, just the best at this. And I've known a lot of people who are really good at this. I dabble in it myself. But man, it is like this was like it's a four hour masterpiece. 64 arguments against democratic socialism. I would say, honestly, if I'm being generous, I think probably about 51 of them destroy socialism by themselves. Like maybe there's a handful of other arguments where you'd go like, oh, that was a, you knocked them down, but you'd still have to come knock them out with one more argument. But about 50 plus of them just on its own. This destroys the entire thing. So like, if you are intellectually curious about this at all, I really highly recommend the video. Keith does a great job of crediting other people who have advanced these arguments. You know, this is obviously a piece put together that a lot of people have worked toward and there's a whole school of thought behind it. So anyway, I say all that, say we're going to talk about the rise of democratic socialism and try to do an episode tearing them apart. Couldn't be anyone better for me to have on my, my, my left flank here to do that. Right flank, whatever, than the great Keith Knight. How are you sir? Thank you for coming on.

[Keith Knight]

I am doing pretty well, Dave. Thank you so much for having me. I thought it'd be relevant because we get along so well with the democratic socialists. We. It comes to criticizing the Afghan war, the Iraq war, Libya, Syria, Gaza and now Iran. But something interesting happened where in the Iran war there was such a clear correlation between Trump and Netanyahu starting the war against Iran. The supply of gas and oil being heavily restricted, restricting the supply and the cost immediately going up. The democratic socialists were, were humble enough to say, you know, it looks like coercive government intervention, limiting the supply that's available to the market, drastically increased the supply, drastically increased the cost of this product to everyone in the economy. This is contrary to the view that high prices are the result of greed and corporations being privately owned. So now not only are we in good agreement with them on foreign policy, even in the economic realm, they're still Considering the fact that the state restricting the supply could lead to higher prices than we otherwise would have. So I thought it'd be a good opportunity to discuss this with them.

[Dave Smith]

No, I mean, I think this is. You start off the video by, by making this point, and I think it's one that. It's very crucial. And I think that maybe some people could, could look at that and go like, oh, yeah, there is kind of something in what Keith's saying here. But no, you can really. And there's a reason why Keith is jumping on this, because in, in the same way, essentially, like what Mises did with action or what Hoppa did with argumentation, you can also really deduce a lot from this one starting point, this one admission that you're saying that, like, hey, if government coercively reduces the supply of something, it will become more expensive because, like, right, look, immediately we could already just draw from that. Like, okay, now what if government were to coercively expand the supply of something? Okay, now let's say they did that with money. Now let's say over the last 20 years, we had the biggest experiment in money printing in the history of humanity. What might happen to the value of the dollar? Okay, well, if gas got much more expensive when it was restricted, the dollar might get much less value when it's coercively expand. Like, there's a lot that they're giving up there. And I think that you're right to insist that maybe they apply that to some other energy or to some other area. In fact, to all other areas. But, and to your point, look, they've been opposing this war. We've been opposing this war. Obviously there is a thing here where. And, and, and you talked about this a bit, a bit at the beginning of your video too. But like, they are clearly ascendant. Obviously they have a little bit of the wind at their back right now because, you know, say whatever you will about mom, Donnie, but he was against a genocide that just happened. He was stupid war that just took place. And all the people who were for that war and genocide are trying to morally scold this guy. So screw. You know, and in the same way, now guys like me and you, we're kind of in a position where we got a little bit of the wind at our back too, because we were against this war. We were against the genocide. We are getting a lot of, you know, credit for that publicly. And the people, you know, who were against the 12 day war are looking really good now. And the people who supported are looking pretty Bad. But, you know, Keith, as, you know, like, if. If we were able to play any role in this podcast world, and I think maybe we were in. In, you know, convincing people to be against the COVID regime or convincing people not to believe Russia gate or convincing people to be against the war in Ukraine or convincing people to be against, you know, whatever woke nonsense or whatever the latest war is. I mean, if anybody is now going, the answer to this is socialism. God, man, they are so wrong. And if we got any type of platform, it's incumbent on us to just point out how this is just. This is. It's 180 degrees the wrong answer. It is the. It is going in because you have cancer, and the doctor's recommendation being, why don't we give you more cancer? This is the absolute wrong direction, and it's incumbent on us to. To make that argument.

[Keith Knight]

Exactly. Condoleezza Rice actually got something right once on a podcast. It was incredible. She's talking to Andrew Roberts, and he said, what is the most interesting historical counterfactual that you like to consider? And she thought about it and said, you know, in early 1917, the Allies, America, Britain, France should not have pushed Alexander Kerensky's regime in Russia to stay in the war by doing that and reallocating resources toward a war effort. What happened was the Bolsheviks ran on peace, bread, and land, and that's what appealed to the people. The state was so war hungry, so focused on murdering other people, that when they heard the Bolsheviks offering peace, bread, and land, then the people saw, hey, maybe the Bolsheviks aren't my first choice, but this war is so psychotic. I think Russia lost 1.7 million people in the First World War, then it drew people to them. And that's exactly where Donald Trump is bringing us. He has the House, he has the Senate. He has a 6 to 3 majority on the Supreme Court. He has the executive branch. He's got a huge federal budget to deal with. And what does he talk about? The ballroom. He talks about expanding the military budget to $1.5 trillion. You can't blame people for saying, even if I don't love the Mom Donnies of the world, that's a hell of a lot better than what Trump is giving us.

[Dave Smith]

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[Keith Knight]

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[Dave Smith]

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[Keith Knight]

Ben Burgess.

[Dave Smith]

No, no, no, no, that. Which was also a good one. But I was thinking of the, the older Professor Richard Wolf. Yes, that's right. Thank you, Professor Wolf. So the, but look, those guys, when they talk about democratic socialism, they're talking about democratizing the workforce. They're talking about the fact that there shouldn't be bosses and workers anymore, outlawing employers. Now, again, that still raises a lot of questions. Are like, well, how would you enforce this? What would be illegal? What would be legal to fund all types of things. But when AOC and Mamdani and Bernie Sanders talk about democratic socialism, that's not what they're talking about. They're talking about essentially being for more welfare, being more liberal than the average liberal in common parlance or, or whatever. And, and then when they give these definitions, you hear AOC say, the definition of democratic socialism is that in an advanced society everyone should have the right to live and thrive and have respect. And I'm sorry, the exact quote, in a modern moral and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live. Well, gee, Keith, argue against that. We think people should not poor, they die. Like, what do you mean? Nobody thinks people should be so poor. They. So anyway, essentially it's. They leave it on you to sit here and define what it is that they are talking about because they won't ever actually define it in a coherent way themselves. And I will just say, if you're an honest observer, observer of this debate going in, I think it is fair to say that's like, hey, we don't do that. You don't see libertarians going around like, I'm an anarchist and so I believe in a minimal state. And you're like, oh, wait a minute, no, no, you're not. If you're an anarchist, you don't believe in a minimal state. You believe in a minimal state. You're not an anarchist. We don't contradict ourselves in these ways. Are you a socialist or are you not. Do you believe. You know, so we are sitting Here saying we believe in private property rights and laissez faire government. We're being very clear on what it is we believe in and they are not. And that's frustrating.

[Keith Knight]

Oh, it's extremely difficult to, to grab onto. Bhaskar Sankara mentions in his book the Socialist Manifesto that it's important for the workers to own the factors of production. But even that in under capitalism when there is a stock market, the workers in about 15 minutes can find somewhere online to invest in companies to own stock. This is even better than democratic socialism because if I work as part of the problem. Well, I don't know if you guys are going to go under. I might want to invest in the Tim Dillon podcast. I might also want to invest in the Theo Von podcast. I don't want to, I don't love

[Dave Smith]

the specific examples but I get the point, I get the general point you're making.

[Keith Knight]

But yeah, sure, you want to be diversified and that's what capitalism allows with access to a stock market. So it's not even the workers own the factors of production. With him. A much better definition would be the outlawing of employer employee contracts. That would be a consistent definition with someone like AOC though. This simply is what Hans Hoppe says in A theory of socialism and capitalism. Communism is the abolition of private property. Socialism is the institutionalized aggression against private property and all contractual exchanges. Capitalism is a social system based on the explicit recognition of self ownership private property and non aggressive contractual exchanges between consenting adults. That's important to start with just because when you don't allow someone to define something they can call anything they want what they already like. How is it that Social Security given to us by Congress is different than the Gulf of Tonkin resolution also given to us by conference, both under the guise of helping human beings improve their well being? It the intentions are always there. So yes, the definitions are vitally important.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, that's right. Because you kind of can't, you know, we want to figure out what's right here and what's correct and we can't do that unless we know what we're talking about. It's pretty basic demand of any debate.

[Keith Knight]

So.

[Dave Smith]

Well, as, as we see that kind of the rise of, of democratic socialists, there's obviously one of the reasons why it's important that people like you take them on is because, well quite frankly everybody else seems to be unable to do it except kind of people almost in our camp and able to do it in the most effective way because so many of them already all of these principles in their worldview. And so they can't really attack these principles. And you see them trying to attack Mamdani for every other reason rather than going right at the heart of why this program can't work. And. And you don't have to make him a secret jihadist or say, oh, my God, the problem is he won't visit Israel. Well, that's stupid. No one cares about that anyway. And, you know, we've already seen the. You know, the Israeli government looks pretty indistinguishable from jihadists themselves these days. So it's just not alarming people that much. But so why? What is it that you would say? Right. You know, me and you are both guys who are former leftists. You know, I really was, and I was young and dumb at the time, but I was like an economic leftist until I encountered these ideas. You were also. And so let's go through a few of them, like, why it is that this system cannot work for the ends that they wish to achieve.

[Keith Knight]

So before we even get to that, let's get to the logic behind what they say and what they're literally advocating. So Mamdani is on the John Storch show and says a lot of what we've come to accept as the facts of life across our country is driven by democratic socialist principles. If today you and I were to introduce the idea of a building that lends out books for three, we would be slandered in the same way that so many new ideas are slandered today. And yet, that's the library. So this is the fallacy of looking at one side of the equation, looking at a person going into a building, getting a book, not having to engage in monetary exchanges. Therefore, it is free. He then compares that to government schools. Now, it's odd to think, why is there a huge federal resource budget for government schools if they are free? Well, it's because taxpayers are actually paying for it. This is equally as fallacious as saying, why do you care that Pete Hegseth wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget? One, it's for defense, and defense is good, and two, it's free. I've never gotten a bill from the Marines, from the army, from the Navy, from the Air Force. It's just free. Well, what you're looking at is one side of the equation and not looking at the coercive funding mechanism that is actually financing this, whether it's through increasing the money supply or whether it's through taxation. So the myth of free is vitally Important. So then say, well, I'm actually such a democratic socialist, I don't even believe in money. So yes, that's how we're going to make it free. This is not recognizing that there are costs associated with all actions. Your time is scarce. Every minute you spend doing one thing, it's a minute you're not spent doing something else. Every cubic pound of concrete that is used to build the Hans Hoppe Museum is not used to build the Rosa Parks Museum or the Mamdani Museum. Where should it be located? Should it be in the middle of Times Square or should it be in Montana? Prices would be a way that you would generally coordinate these things with the profit incentive. But there are no such prices to coordinate with under the concept of democratic socialism. Once you say something should be free, the military, healthcare, housing, you've already lied and said something that costs trillions of dollars a year is free. Okay, so once you've passed that notice, there is, there's a general expression. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And this is where whoever's paying the piper, the piper is reliant on the person who pays him. So he's going to have some influence on what the piper does. This is exactly what takes place in the marketplace. The reason we have a saying the customer is always right is because in order for producers to get our scarce dollars, they have to first meet our consumer demand. That's why most companies try to build products and services and distribute them to as many people as possible. This is how Amazon gets wealthy. Walmart. That's how Red Rob in an out Burger. It's how Cornelius Vanderbilt got so wealthy by lowering the cost of steamship travel, making it accessible to the average person. It's how Henry Ford got so much money by making the Model T cost less than his competitors. It's how Rockefeller made money by lowering the cost of oil. Andrew Carnegie did this with steel. The democratic socialists, when these things are privatized under the greedy profit incentive, have no explanation for why these things go down in price. And larger numbers of people over time are able to accumulate them. So by not only lying about that it's free, but by taking away. The producers focus on consumers, where their money comes from. And now they're getting paid by the politicians. So now the producers answer to Congress and try to make Congress happy instead of the consumers. So we would naturally expect there to be lower quality and higher prices than they otherwise would. When producers are primarily focused on pleasing Congress and regulators rather than pleasing consumers because they will please whoever is giving Them the money. That is the principled reason for why more socialism leads to lower quality and higher prices than it otherwise would.

[Dave Smith]

All right guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is my Patriot Supply. I love this company. I'm a big believer in preparedness and so always been thrilled to have them on board. Just a few years ago, if you told someone you were stocking up on emergency food, they would have probably thought you were a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. Not so much anymore. We've all seen supply chain chaos, devastating natural disasters, inflation, war, civil unrest and preparedness has gone mainstream. That's why we're so excited to be partners with my Patriot Supply, America's original Patriot preparedness company. Right now they're celebrating America's 250th birthday with one of the best deals they've ever offered. $250 off their best selling 6 month emergency food supply available now at preparelikdave.com this is the same stuff that I keep in my house. They deliver 2,000 calories a day. The food lasts up to 25 years without refriger and it contains no GMOs or artificial colors or flavors. And you can count on it to keep your family fed no matter what happens, even at full price. I think this is a great decision to make, but with the 250 discount, it's a no brainer. Go to preparelikedave.com to get your emergency food kit today. That's preparelikedave.com all right, let's get back on the show. Yes. Okay, beautiful. So if I could, and correct me if I'm wrong, but almost like if we were to crystallize kind of, I think some points here, right. That almost and almost even if we were to phrase them in ways to challenge two democratic socialists. So like, I think so far what we've said here is like number one, there's a very, a couple of reasonable requests in this kind of conversation. I'm almost phrasing this like some of the lefties that I like. I almost, I want to send this episode to them and see, get some feedback from them. But so number one, I think it's a reasonable request that we say, hey, you got to define like what you actually are and in a way that makes sense so we can talk about what we're actually disagreeing over here. And that number two, you got to admit it's very unfair for you to say we're for free health care, we're for free housing we're for this because it's kind of obvious what you're doing here is you're shifting this into a debate about morality, about like as if we all hate health care and education, all this stuff. When obviously the real debate here that we're having is whether the system of taxation at the threat of violent imprisonment and then the redistribution of that money, but whether that is a better system than voluntary exchanges between people. And then you're going to have to get into actually looking at those systems and describing like why one is. And I think some of the points you get into there is that then you have to actually make the argument of like why they don't have all of the incentive problems that the market has, but none of the incentive solutions that the market has. And so then that like that action there is where the actual debate is. So we can at least ask them to like, let's be honest and describe what we're talking about and describe the actual mechanism by which you're going to, you're going to enforce these, these policies.

[Keith Knight]

One of the differences that I see between myself and democratic socialists, it's sort of like the root issue is someone like myself who is on the right, who believes in the constrained division. I believe that human beings are inherently self interested. So when I see that there are profitable opportunities to make profits off food, housing, health care, books, computers, microphones, I say, oh, that's a really good thing. Because people are self interested, they want the money, they're going to have an incentive to produce those, not just in a small quantity, but in a large quantity. Because people want more money than less money in general. People want more resources, more power when they have the opportunity to do so. If you don't believe in self interest, you don't think taxing at 40, 60, 90% will really diminish anyone's work ethic. You don't think that having tons of regulations makes it so there are going to be fewer producers, fewer contractors, fewer employers. With fewer contractors and fewer employers, employees and consumers have less options than they otherwise would. This is what creates the oligopolies that we experience today that Mamdani just calls monopolies. But anytime there's an oligopoly, those oligopolies tend to advocate more regulations. They seem to be very happy with things as they currently are. When I worked at Walmart, we had two CEOs, H. Lee Scott and Doug McMullen explicitly come out in favor of the minimum wage. The same thing Hassan Piker advocates. Now. How does he explain that there is no mechanism by which you can increase the cost of something drastically and still get the same result. They see that when healthcare costs rise, fewer people can access them. But when the number of regulations rise. When it used to take 410 days to build the Empire State Building in 1933, it now takes 410 days for me to find a permit to put an expansion on my small house here. That is what regulation does. That's the level of innovation that's been stifled because of the coercive apparatus of the state and the concept of socialists saying, instead of achieving our ends with social cooperation in the voluntary realm, we're going to delegate surrogate decision making processes to the coercive apparatus of government. This is the heart of why democratic socialism is terrible. It raises the cost of production, means we're less productive. It raises the cost of social cooperation and contracting. So we get less cooperation, less contracting, less wealth and lower standards of living.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think there's some questions that you just hit on here in this, in, in already on the podcast and that you hit on in your, in your longer video where it's like these kind of very basic questions that you. I really would like to hear. And, and we're taking this back to like, basic philosophical stuff here, but I would like to hear answers from this from some of the democratic socialists, like questions like, why doesn't everyone make the minimum wage? Why? Why is such a small percentage of the workforce make the minimum allowed wage? Like, why are employers voluntarily giving more money that they don't have to? And as you also said, why do prices of things ever go down? You know, like, why do the prices of electronics? You know, you got to think here you have a producer who's already gotten you to pay so much money for an iPhone and they're going to lower the price or they're going to make it better than it was when they already know they got you? I mean, why on earth. I mean, why wouldn't the greed that spiked during 2008 and spike during, during 2021, why wouldn't that same greed spike right there and have them raise the price? I mean, there it does seem. I got to say over here, there is no coherent answer to this question under the democratic socialist worldview, why would it not? You know, if this is a thing, you know, as they say, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer or whatever like that. It's like, okay, but you would say, like, at a certain point, what happens there, right, to all the poor People like if there's only pressure in one direction, which is the capitalist class always being more greedy and driving our wages down and down and down, wouldn't you expect to see 95% of the of the workforce at the minimum wage?

[Keith Knight]

And if the poor get poorer, what we should see is instead of looking at money or dollars, it's so hard to compare how much is a hundred dollars in America versus $100 in the great in Great Britain's currency versus the euro. How do you compare today to 1970? Yeah, countries, it's so difficult. The best measure to use are time prices. This would be the average amount of time a person has to work in order to access a product or service. In short, the time prices of accessing products and services has drastically decreased in the last 100 years. Now that is a microscopic amount of time that the human race has been in existence and in the last hundred years since 1926. There's no Democratic socialist explanation outside of price controls, which obviously disincentivize production and lead to shortages. Clearly. So what we should see, if the poor get poor, there is no increase in accessibility to the average person of anything that's privatized. Tylenol, Dayquil, computers, Lasik, eye surgery, water bottles, printers, paintings, books, televisions, all of these things should have been at 1% because the only the 1%, only the bourgeoisie can afford such things. In 1926 1% of people had them. In 1966 1% of people had them. And today only the top 1% can afford these things because they are privatized. So that's one way to measure wealth. Another way, if you want to use dollars, is to look at the average earnings of a 16 year old and then compare it to the average earnings of a 46 year old. By looking at these groups, we see that one group, even though the same minimum wage applies to them, one group earns a lot more than the other group. That disparity alone disproves the idea that it's about greed or if you happen to have a nephew, it's all about nepotism or it's well, because of white supremacy. Other groups get paid, of course. Nigerian Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, all have higher incomes than white Americans. So the fact that there is a disparity, the fact that when someone starts a job, they're getting paid a very small amount of money each per each year they get on the job experience, the average person's wage tends to increase. If the poor got poor, what we would see is the Average person's income over time starts at a spot and then decreases. You start at, you know, $10 an hour and then after five years you go to 950 and then after five more years you go to $9. We see literally the exact opposite now. Say that there was the stagnating wages that Paul Krugman loves to lie about. If prices are drastically decreasing in the economy because there isn't a central bank and there's mass production and the producers are trying to appeal to mass consumption, that actually wouldn't be an issue because your purchasing power would be increasing and you wouldn't really mind o going to get 20 bucks an hour for the rest of my life. But over time that money's going to buy more and more and more. So even that wouldn't really be an issue if you had no central bank, if there were mass production, if there were fewer regulations. One more thing I don't. I should have made this on the self interest point because do you agree with me that the rejection of self interest is critical to the foundational dispute between us and democratic socialists?

[Dave Smith]

Yes, I think that there's, I think that, and maybe this is like some kind of Adam Smith basic stuff here, but I think that capitalism incorporates the human reality of greed and self interest and it can channel it. And socialists essentially have to just pretend it's not there. And they have to because they, or certainly at least they have to pretend it's not there for those in government for sure because otherwise you got major problems. Problems is that individuals who are this selfish in the market are now also this selfish and now with the power of the state which is, has to be stronger than the market in order for the whole thing to work anyway. So you have to give them more power. And yes, also I think there's, there's an enormous. But socialism doesn't have a cleansing mechanism for, for the negatives of selfishness the way that, that markets do. In other words, so you can only get successful if you're serving other people in a free market. Whereas for, for example, if you were having. Which is something socialists never even try to deal with. But like if everything in the economy is democratically decided. Well, like how, how exactly does it help for everyone who works in the typewriter industry to get a vote on whether the home computer should be produced? Because obviously they're going to vote against that. We all recognize that it was really not in the typewriter store' that home computers became the thing that they are. But when you have a market you can go, well, the consumers wanted it and some producer wanted to produce it and so sorry, that's like, in other words, there's going to be losers, it will be against their self interest and democracy only mucks that up. So yes, I think you're absolutely on to something huge there. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Prolon. If you want to be your most radiant this summer, check out Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet. It makes it easy to target fat loss, support lean muscle and reset your metabolism so you look and feel your best all summer long in just five days. Prolon works at the cellular level to rejuvenate you from the inside out and help you hit your summer goals. Prolon, as I've been telling you about for a while now, guys, it's a plant based nutrition program. They have soups, snacks, beverages and they're all designed to nourish your body while keeping it in a fasting state. So you trick your cells into thinking that you're fasting and it triggers cellular rejuvenation and renewal. It was developed over decades at USC's Longevity Institute. This is backed by top US medical centers. Prolon has been shown to support biological age reduction, metabolic health, skin appearance, fat loss with muscle protection, energy and a healthier relationship with food. So if you're ready for your own reset for a limited time, Prolon is offering our listeners 15% off site wide plus a $40 bonus gift. When you subscribe to their five day program, just visit prolonlife.com P O T P that's P R O L O N L I E.com POTP to claim your 15 discount and your $40 bonus gift. Prolonglife.com POTP all right, let's get back into the show.

[Keith Knight]

Thank heavens NBC, ABC and Fox were unable to vote on whether or not podcasts could enter the competition market. So one thing about criticizing the rich and just supporting the poor, we can say to them, or just supporting the masses instead of the bourgeoisie, one thing we can say in their favor is being rich almost necessarily meant you were evil for the vast majority of history because the only way to acquire large amounts of wealth and resources was theft and conquest. It wasn't until there was the concept of private property, the freedom to contract and make mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges, that people then could reasonably create large amounts of wealth in a first generation time frame by meeting consumer demand. And that so for the vast majority of history, being rich could necessarily equate with evil. So what I use for the self interest proof or way as a, to provide some evidence, you can look at what I call the Donald Trump test. What we can do is take someone, have them in the private sector and then put that same person in the public sector. Because according to democratic socialism, in the public sector they have to answer to us, the voters, so they're going to be trying to please us. But in the private sector, evil, greedy, self interest, individualism, dog eat dog mentalities and externalities, that's horrible. We want people in the public sector sector. What happened was we actually took someone, Donald Trump, from the private sector where he had the Apprentice, he had buildings which, whether or not you like them, Donald Trump was not that much of a threat to society as far as, you know, being totally detrimental. When he was in this voluntary sector, even if you didn't like him, he had no right to conscript you with the Selective service. He had no recognized right to declare war. He had no access to a central bank. He had no right to take, take 20, 30, 40% of your annual income by force with a threat of putting you in jail if you don't chip in. So this actually provides an insight into the reality. This is not just theory. This tests the theory. If we have a nefarious actor, are they more detrimental to society in the voluntary sector, in the private sector, or in the coercive sector of politics? Because I don't like that building in Vegas. I think it's really hideous. But compare that to tonight. A civilization might have to end. I don't want it to, but it probably will. That's a little different. Killing 156 civilians on February 28th of 2026. A little bit worse than the horrible episodes of the Apprentice. This is a real world example. If you don't like something, make sure there's not an apparatus that has a lot of power that those bad people can occupy because humans are inherently self interested. The example I use in the video is compare the thought of someone who passed away in your life that you cared about. Take one person and compare your emotions with how you feel about that one person to the 500,000 deaths that took place during the Crimean war in the 1860s between the British, the French, the Ottomans and the Russians. If people weren't self interested, they'd get 500,000 times as sad about those as they would about this one. Or they would get. According to world population review, 167,000 people across the world die every single day. You Would thank God we're self interested or we wouldn't be able to operate. You should be get if you're not self interested, you should be getting 167,000 times as sad about everyone else who dies every day than you would about your boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father. Because those people are just as equally worthy of life as anyone else. You can even put the Scandinavian test. Why are there luxury item goods in Denmark, Finland and Sweden when those people know that they're starving people in Africa, India, Indonesia. Shouldn't they take their scarce resources and say we can't have any bars, any TVs, any computers. We have to give this money to the poor. Every time a democratic socialist watches Netflix or watches YouTube or takes a nap or goes to a restaurant, they are spending scarce time and resources that could be allocated to helping the poor. Why don't they do that? Because they're self interested just like everyone else. So the difference between the free market and socialism is not whether or not people are self interested. Self interest is a universal condition of the human race place. The difference is under which constraints are self interested actors operating. Can I as a self interested person only get money if I first please you? Or do I have access to the coercive apparatus of the state and I could meet my ends absent your consent? Then I don't have to raise your standard of living before I get your money.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. You know, so I wanna, oh, I wanna end on against me and actually I want to kind of do do against me last and I want to do maybe Gene Epstein's I think go together with, with against me. Like the, the Gene Epstein argument about voluntary cooperatives and stuff like that. But I want to do, let's do like another economic one before we get to that. Because I do find more and more that I did the example I used, I can't, I gotta look this up. Because I don't know what the term for it is, but I think it was like in ancient Rome, I think this for like a thousand years humans best scientists thought that viruses came from the clouds and that that was just how you got sick. Like if you had a runny nose your doctor would just be like, I know, damn storm clouds coming in. That's what happens. It was just totally wrong. This is not true. And you know, it's just they thought they were doing science, but it's not science. It's just they had it all wrong. And that's kind of how we feel about everyone else with economics. Like we really do. Like almost the Austrians really do feel like, listen, I don't know what it is that you econometrics start do it but like none of this is science. This is all just kind of nonsense. And, and there is so like, I don't know, there's something about how the idea that you're, you're trying to use a tool that cannot deliver prosperity for prosperity. You know, there's you're, there's something about like you're trying to. It all comes down to just price controls and price controls don't work essentially

[Keith Knight]

when it comes to economic arguments. One of I, one of the ones I use is fallacy number 49, the surplus value myth. So a lot of democratic socialists, which makes them different from your average Democrats will necessarily see the surplus value aspect of the economy as the rich, not necessarily the employer, but the stock owners, the rich, the influential people are in some ways extracting surplus value from the labor. A few things about this on the concept of getting money from the worker. Notice they don't differentiate between voluntary and coercive if you're benefiting. So even if I voluntarily contract with the employer, they still say the employer is extracting my surplus value. Or take this concept and extend it to stay at home moms. The stay at home mom is reaping benefits from her husband who works. She would be extracting the surplus value of the husband. There's nothing wrong with this according to you or I, but the democratic socialist needs to make sure that this mom is also part of the working class or else she's not contributing to the workers production of goods and services. She is extracting the labor surplus of her husband. This would mean immediately all welfare has to end because welfare recipients are necessarily getting tax money, money that is the surplus value of the workers. Anyone who goes to college or is in school, the colleges make money by getting the students to work, that is extracting their surplus value. Any internship should be illegal automatically because the employer is benefiting with the surplus value that the laborer creates. So this is completely psychotic. Obviously these are voluntary transactions where people see well, I'd like an internship because I want on the job experience so I could have a better income in the future. I work for $0 an hour at school in hopes of getting more money in the future. I go to work to give money to my wife because this is a relationship that I greatly value. So by not differentiating between voluntary surplus value and involuntary, a socialist is already at a complete deficit. Also notice how this only applies to profitable Industries where the surplus value is being extracted, the majority of businesses are not profitable. So in that case, it would be the employees extracting surplus value from the employers. And then the employees, I guess are the criminals in this case. And then they lie and say, well, we're just against. We embrace the spirit of Karl Marx. It's not that we're anti private property, we're just anti bourgeoisie private property. But these morons are always taxing the working class with sales tax, income taxes, property taxes, estate taxes, or death taxes. So even in the economic realm, by regulating the actions, by coercively limiting the actions of the employees, they're making the employees worse off than they otherwise would be. By rejecting their freedom to contract and have access to an employer who comes up with the. Okay, before the value of the capitalist comment on the surplus value thing.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, well, look, I'll say this right. So right here, and this is the way I said it a few episodes back, was that I think, you know, in, in Marx's use of the labor theory of value, it's just, I think this is right at the heart of what messes up this whole kind of understanding. And look, the labor theory of value is just objectively wrong. It's been disproven. It's the clouds cause viruses. It's. No, it's not, it's germs. There's a different answer. That's not what's creating the value. This can be demonstrated and logically proven that the labor is not what's great. Now, Adam Smith, for despite his flaws, like he relied on the labor theory of value, but it didn't really muck up the theory of the invisible hand, let's say. But, but socialism is destroyed by that. Because their entire worldview here, which is just again, objectively wrong, is that essentially the worker is creating the value with their labor. Now, if that were true, then in a sense, they've got a little bit of a case, because you would go, yeah, you're going into work, you're bringing in 15, you're creating $15 an hour of value, and your employer's only paying you 10. His job is just to sit there and siphon off the excess value that you created by working, working. But the fact is that none of that's true. And we all know that on a human level. And actually we wouldn't even go get the job if that were true, because we already have the work. I got the value. Why do I need to go to an employer then? No, look, if I'm A really good salesman because I'm just, I got a silver tongue and I'm really good at selling and I go get a job selling computers and I make 300k a year because I'm such a good salesman. It's not that I just brought in 500k and my, the boss chooses to only give me 300 of it. So this, he's stealing 200k from me. If you look at things like that, you got it all. No, I didn't have any computers. All I had was my skills to sell. This dude was sitting on a factory of 10,000 computers. I didn't have that. In order to get that, I would have had to lay out like $5 million. You know, in order to eventually go make the 500,000, I would have had to take enormous risk. I would have had to put a ton of work into, into building a store and building a brand name and getting a customer base and all of these other things. So the deal was you take care of all that and I got the selling and we agreed upon a split of the value that both of us are creating by coming together. You know, if, if somebody built a factory that was because they had money, they could have spent that on present consumption. Instead they spent that on a factory that now people, people. So again, the point is that yes, your employer isn't stealing from you, you came to an agreement. In the same way your housewife isn't stealing from you, you came to an agreement. So yes, I think the whole idea of the value being derived from the worker and then being stolen from everybody else is made up. It's all nonsense. All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is Troll Code. Trollco was built by two guys from the oil patch who were sick of clothing companies pretending blue collar workers didn't exist. While most brands chase trends and influencers, Trollco was made for the people who work with their hands, solve real problems, and keep the world running. It's built on that simple dirty hands, clean money mindset. Show up, work hard, provide for your family and earn everything you've got. No handouts, no shortcuts. Trollco makes tough, comfortable hoodies, tees, hats, hats, and real workwear that actually holds up. And you don't need to be in the trades to wear it. If you value self reliance, responsibility and honest hard work, Trollco is for you. Go check them [e-mail] problem. That's T R O L L C O.com problem. Use the promo code Dave. 25 for 25 off your first order. Trollco. Dirty hands, Clean money. Support a brand that supports real people. All right, let's get back into the show.

[Keith Knight]

Imagine going on to Shark Tank. This is how we can test the value of an idea, either to investors or to customers. And when you go on, you say, I have an idea, I'll have a thousand workers for the my company. Or actually I want it to be more valuable. I want more workers, I want 10,000 workers. I don't have an idea of what to sell, how to sell it, how to market it. I don't know where we're going to be located. I don't know if it's going to be a product or a service. I don't know what training methods we'll use for these 10,000 employees, but I have the 10,000 employees and this is where all the value comes from. So just give us an idea that's going to generate billions of dollars in revenue by meeting consumer demand and then we're all good. Anyone watching that would realize, huh, I think the idea of coming up with what to sell product or service kind of of does play an important role, a vitally important role in determining a company's value or the value that workers have when they have access to capital equipment. So what Marks was well, look, I

[Dave Smith]

mean, well again look because, and look, it's just, it, sometimes it comes off like you're being a dick to like to, to low skilled workers or something like that. But like, like you kind of got to tell the truth to people otherwise, you know what I mean? Like in the same way that like your kid, well maybe when they're real young you want to lie to him about some stuff like everything always works out and is going to be okay and there's no chance that you die in a horrible car accident or something. You might tell your 4 year old but, but, but you wouldn't tell your 18 year old that there's nothing wrong about them and they're perfect. And actually the reason the world exists is because you and everybody else is just taking value away from you. And the truth is that, that say for example, look, if you, I don't know exactly what to use, but let's just say so so here in this podcast, right, I got people who work on, Natalie produces the show here we have people who sell ads for the show. We have people who do you know, there's, there's people who do a bunch of different jobs. Now you could look at this and you could Say, oh, like, well, because Dave gets paid more, that means he's ripping all these people off. He's, he's, he's taking advantage of them and they're just making like a little salary, but he's making more money. But, and it's like, well, no, look, the reality of the situation is that you're, these people that I'm talking about are much younger than me. They're, they're 20 years younger than me. I wasn't making any money 20 years ago. They're paying their dues, they're learning the industry, they are coming up. But the truth is that if I've had people, if somebody said like, Well, I demand $500,000, I'd go, okay, well, we can't afford to pay you that and we'll find someone else who can do the job. And that's that somebody else can come in and do this. That's why you're not worth more money. I mean, it's just like, look, if you, I'm sorry, like, if you are a minimum wage worker, then no, you're not the one producing all of the value who everybody else is ripping off. You are replaceable. Get your skills up. Sorry. This is real life. And that's how things get produced and how things work.

[Keith Knight]

And Jordan Peterson brought that to the dating market it. And that, that's why it's so important I, I'm alone because I'm just too terrific. No, clean your room better yourself. See if there.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah.

[Keith Knight]

This is one metric to use to determine whether or not a democratic socialist is a nefarious person or a well meaning person who is mistaken. And this is their willingness to accept voluntary solutions in the interim. So they could say, I want the state to coercively fund and monopolize health care and education. And you can say, all right, well, that's probably going to take a while. Even if you think it's right or wrong, is there anything the working class can do in the present to increase their income or make themselves healthier? You want to get healthy? Go to YouTube. Search the keto diet. That'll change your life dramatically for the better. We have an obesity epidemic because people have not watched enough keto videos on YouTube, which I didn't. Lost 110 pounds. And if you want a higher wage, we could stage a protest outside the White House, raise the minimum wage. But there's another way, which is look at people in a company. Some get paid more than others. What are these people doing that the others are not showing up on Time, getting on the job, experience, requesting a raise, increasing their skill set. And in order to get an even higher wage, you want a general foundation where people have access to a lot of employers. So you can tell an employer to shove it more easily, but with more regulations you have fewer employers than you otherwise would. Or take the concept of education, the democratic socialist. Even after all the Internet and computers and Amazon has given us with free books, they still want you to go to those four years of university for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then they say, but wait, I want the state to coercively fund them. That so you'll pay for it through taxes instead of having to pay tuition. If you want to, you know, invest in a business, you got to do that yourself. But we want you to go to college. You know, the place where Marxists are disproportionately influential. That's where we want everyone to go for four years. Well, maybe I could wait until I'm college age and all those things, or I could go back and spend four years of my life. But also I have access to Grok. Grok is now free. I set my grandma up with it two or three weeks ago. You could educate yourself there. You could use Google, you could use Internet Archive, you could use Wikipedia, you could use the Libertarian Institute and get a ton of free, non coercively funded education that way. Those would be solutions that if you came to the democratic socialists, they'd say, well, it's really good that in the healthcare industry, Tylenol and Dayquil and nyquil and a ton of things at Walgreens, those improve your health care and those are really cheap and that's good in the meantime. And you could do things to get a raise in the meantime at your job. And you could improve your educational value by using things that you already have access to. Yeah, well, you know, if they reject those, then you're dealing with someone who's just a domestic imperialist, not someone who actually wants to improve the well being of the poor. These every week should be celebrating the drastic decrease in absolute poverty that the human race is experiencing against in the last hundred years as a causal result of private property and the freedom of contract. Anyone who doesn't is a domestic imperialist, not someone who cares about the workers.

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, Amen brother. I mean look, it's like, and, and look, I mean, I guess this is. And, and so we could do kind of the Gene Epstein one here because this is real in line with what you're just saying and then do the against me. But I think kind of the, the broader message and some of you guys, you more astute listeners who really follow the Libertarian Institute and all the great work they do, you probably got this if you watched Keith's awesome video. But really the, the secret theme there, right, that isn't exactly expressed out loud is that all this kind of applies to statism in general, right? Like all of this is really arguments against coercive intervention into the political life and the economy. And that it's not essentially right, it's not just the democratic socialists, it's basically just that they exist on this spectrum of how much you want this incident. And look, look, I'd say it like this, what, what we are saying, and I mean this in the most good faith way to any, you know, democratic socialist who might listen to this. What we said at the beginning is like, hey, let's like just define our terms. Let's admit what the disagreement here is really about. It's not that me and Keith hate kids learning stuff or hate hip surgeries or anything like that. We believe these things should be provided voluntarily on the market. And you are arguing for statism. Like that's, that's the core of the disagreement here is that you, and to your point, Keith, that this, that I'll, I'll kind of segue into the point that Gene Epstein makes, which is very in line with what you were just saying, but that he likes to throw out a lot of these statistics. One of them I remember is that the bottom half of the population, so forget this 99%, you know, the rich 1%, the bottom 50%, right? So we're giving you like everyone making 80k a year is out, okay, like, like this is. The bottom 50% controls 1/3 of the consumer spending. Okay? So now that's not quite as equitable as maybe the socialists would like it to be. Perhaps they think the bottom 50% should control 50%. Now of course, don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be misleading. The top 1%, they, if we were looking at investment numbers or something like that, it would be way more skewed. But just looking at consumption, okay, the bottom 50% controls 1/3 of the consumption of the United States of America. The biggest consumption, you know, engine in the history. One third of that consumption power is completely controlled. Do you know, one third of the entire consumption economy can move mountains, okay? So all the voluntary path is wide open to the democratic socialists. All you have to do is all like, look like, let's say, let's say a First year intern here at the podcast network goes, hey, I don't think Dave should be the boss of part of the problem. I think we should all own it equally and we should all say, oh, okay, well you can't violently overtake my company, but you can go start your own company where everybody owns it equally, nobody works for anyone at right, so you can go start worker co ops and let it be known that, hey, the system here is that we do it democratically. There is no owner, there is no employee. We're all in this together and all you gotta do is convince the workers of the world to unite. You don't even gotta convince the workers of the world. You gotta convince like a percentage of the workers of America to only shop at co op shops, only shop it at worker owned businesses, all that. So essentially you can have all of this right now. You can have your socialist utopia if you can persuade people, but the bottom line is that you know, you can't, you know you can't persuade people, you don't even want to try. And, and, and again, Keith, to your point, correct me where I'm wrong, but somebody show me one instance where the democratic socialist is arguing, doing. Actually in this case it should be voluntary. Actually, in this case we don't believe in government intervention. Actually. Like, like where is any of that? Where is any impulse to like. Because obviously, look, on some level we all know I there, there's a difference between me sitting here and saying, hey, I believe in universal health care, so I'm a good person. Hey, I believe in fighting the war in Iran, so I'm a good person. Hey, I believe in taxing the rich, so I'm a good person. Hey, I. And then there's a difference between me volunteering at a soup kitchen two nights a week, right? Like on some level you do understand things have to get done at some point. And so what are you actually doing other than just advocating violence, just advocating the state do something else.

[Keith Knight]

Exactly. And if we want to look at the results, you'd think they'd be very appreciative of the Jeff Bezos of the world for giving people more access to books than anyone else. For Steve Jobs innovating the computer and saying, well, at least that was a really good thing. He really empowered the average member of the working class to have access to a computer instead of only the rich and their Ivy leagues having all this information. Now an average member of the working class can use Grok or I'm also using Claude, that also has a free version but imagine the power. Aoc, Mamdani, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, all get on the phone. Phone. Hey, we're starting a GoFundMe. Everyone is going to tweet this out every single day for six months. And the GoFundMe is going to be a eventual replacement for a public option. If you can afford your health care, do whatever. If you can't afford it, you come to us. That would be extraordinarily powerful, but it would be voluntary. And that's why it's not heavily focused on in that aspect. And that's why the definition of socialism is not people coming together and having dignity and being nice. It's actually the institutionalized aggression against private property.

[Dave Smith]

And I think that's why, and that's why I kind of wanted to close on the against me one here. So we'll do that next. Because if, if you concede this, which I really just don't see how if, if you at least concede, say that the difference between me and, or you and Ryan, grim or crystal ball, you know, anti war leftist, who I really like a lot. But the difference between, difference between our economic policy simply is that they believe in the government and I don't. They believe the government should do all these things. I believe the government should stay out of all of them. That is the difference in our policy. And what this does come down to, just again, objectively assessing the thing like we kind of did the economics and this is getting more into just kind of the moral argument of all of that. But I do think there's something really important here to be made because Keith, it's kind of like this, right? If me and you could still try to put ourselves in there, their mind. We're sitting here and saying objectively, you are arguing for an institution which is predicated on the initiation of violence. This is not an institution that goes around and negotiates with people. This is an institution that says we will throw you in a cage and kill you if you resist coming to the cage. In, in, you know, if you don't do as, as we say. This is a law. It's. There's a gun behind this opinion. Whereas in the market it's voluntary transactions with people's individual property. Now they somehow always feel like they are in some way the noble ones. They are the ones saying, hey, we should have healthcare. Yeah. Dave, Keith, you guys are sitting here, there are people struggling here and we're telling them no, we can help them. You know, like they, they have it in their mind that they're kind of the noble ones, and they're the anti fascists. And to me, it's like one of the biggest things that has to be that we have to get across here, because it's obviously true, is that that I am sorry, when it comes to someone like me versus Hassan piker Hassan biker is a goddamn fascist. Like, what are you talking about, dude? You absolutely suppose there's a reason why, like as you said here, there's a reason why you're saying nice things about Ma Tong. You'd never say a nice thing in a world about a capitalist who built a factory. Oh, but all of a sudden, Stalin or Ma built a few factories. That's nice to them. But. So this was an argument that you, you describe really well here. Stefan Molyneux was the first person I ever heard put this forward. But why don't you explain this here? Because I do think this kind of does, to me really get down to the core difference between the libertarian and the democratic socialist. And as they, you know, kind of pride themselves on being anti fascist or something like that, like this, I think gets at the authoritarian nature of advocating for government. So you go ahead and give this argument.

[Keith Knight]

So this is either from his book Everyday Anarchy or Practical Anarchy. And Molyneux asks people, if I were committing a rape, would you have the right to use violence against me to stop me from doing that? The average person, before you finish the sentence, says, yes, absolutely. And then Molyneux says, well, if I were committing a murder, would you have the right to use force, a gun, a knife, to kill me and stop me from doing this? And if I did commit a murder or a rape, would you be justified in putting me in a cage afterward? And people say, yes, absolutely. Then he asked, well, what about kidnapping? Or what if you caught me owning like five or six slaves? Would you have the right to use violence against me? And people unequivocally say, absolutely. So then he says, I don't want to chip in for the current educational system that the state runs because I think the costs out exceed the benefits I believe in on the job, training for skills. I don't want to chip in for this war in Iran or the education system. I think the state health care system is a complete joke. I think the courts are at this point not doing a good job. They might do a better job in the future, and then I'll fund them. So I'm not going to chip in in property taxes, sales taxes, or income taxes this year. Do you have the right to use violence against me if I don't chip in for those. And then the excuses start to pile on. We know that this person. Person is okay with using violence in the case of rape, murder, kidnapping, enslavement, because in that sense, it's defensive. They're attacking you, the aggressor. But in the case of what if I don't want to chip in for the Affordable Care act because I predict health care prices will increase since it limits competition in the health care marketplace, do you want to put me in a cage? If I don't chip in for complete bullshit, what I think is bullshit? Maybe you think it's totally virtuous, and it's going to be terrific, horrific. I just don't want to chip in. Do you have the right to send the police to my house to threaten me? If I resist them, they'll kill me in front of my kids. So you better be damn sure that you're willing to use violence against me. So when Mom Donnie is happily talking about free libraries to John Stewart, what he ignores is the implicit threat that if you don't chip in, the police will come to your house, else put you in a cage, and if you resist, they will shoot you. We, as the civilized world, need to be very careful with. With the amount of violence we are willing to use. And if it's people not chipping in for the US Government producing something, it'd be one thing if it was, like, a good organization. That would be evil enough. But notice they only believe the state has a monopoly right to do this. If taxation weren't theft, Ben Burgess will say, say, well, it's not really theft because you don't really own it. Okay, why can't Walmart and Amazon issue taxes? It's not theft. Why can't I issue taxes? Why can't Dave Smith issue taxes? What the hell is wrong with Dave Smith? You have a standard for Donald Trump. He can issue taxes, but Dave Smith can't. What the is that about? Stefan Molyneux takes over.

[Dave Smith]

Not very egalitarian.

[Keith Knight]

Exactly. Stefan Molyneux says, we have north and South Korea, we have east and West Germany. How do these idiots still think. Think socialism's okay? So he takes it into the realm of the personal. He says, dave, I don't want to chip in for this evil in Iran. Will you use violence against me and the people I live with if I don't chip in for this? And the lesson that Molyneux extracts is because people are so hesitant to say unequivocally, yes, as they are in the case of rape, murder, kidnapping and enslavement. People don't really believe this bullshit. It's all propaganda that was taught in schools. How do you explain the one group that has a monopoly on compulsory education is the one group who you happen to believe has a right to initiate violence against everyone else? What the fuck are the chances of that?

[Dave Smith]

Yeah, well, look, I mean, no, that's, that's right and, and very incredibly well said. You know the thing I think about a lot is like the, you know, the civil rights movement and the look, I mean it really was a stunt hunt that Martin Luther King and then pulled in Birmingham, Alabama. They went there intentionally because they knew they were going to get that reaction. And they had done a bunch of like peaceful sit ins before and just didn't get that reaction. And so it just didn't like blow up the weight. But there was something about making Americans watch young black men in suits and ties get sprayed with fire hoses and have, have you know, golden or excuse me, German shepherds, you know, sick on them. And all this stuff that you had to look at like the enforcement arm of this, you know, it's easy to support segregation in abstract, but like do you really support German shepherds being unleashed on 17 year olds in suits and ties for standing up and demanding equal treatment? That's pretty harsh. And just saying if your whole thing's going to be about supporting government policy, which is what you guys, you know, you won't define it, but clearly it's all about the government should do more in all of these areas. It's like, okay, well this is the actual nature of the beast. Like the actual way that this system that you're advocating works is the like, okay, I like I have a house. We said we accept that I own my house. We, we accept in the same sense as you said that nobody else can take it, right? Only the go. But okay, like if I don't pay my property taxes or if I don't pay my taxes or I don't pay why they will come for this house. They will come for what I have. They will come for me eventually and throw me in jail. And I also, by the way, I got a fair amount of weaponry here at this house. And if I simply do nothing else but defend myself and say I'm not to going going, they will kill me in front of my children. They will murder me in front of my children. Like that is what you support. That's the system you support is them murdering you in front of your children over education, housing, and not over whether we should have education in housing, over whether one centralized monopoly ought to be the ones who provide it. So like, I'm sorry, you support killing citizens for the purpose of maintaining the only true monopoly. So don't give me this hippie dippy stuff about how you're the ones for dignity and you're the ones against authoritarianism and you're the ones against monopoly control of the the economy. You are for the monopolizer and you are willing to kill people for it. I think it's something you should look in the mirror about.

[Keith Knight]

Exactly. And it's not just the logic behind Mind the Law. It's out of all the groups, this is literally the same group who Democratic socialists are rightfully advocating is complicit in a genocide in Gaza, starting a war with Iran, killing civilians. They mentioned the atrocities in Iraq and Libya and Syria and Afghanistan. They've been mentioning mass murder, accusing the government of mass murder since at least Vietnam. The more well read ones will understand that the second World War and the atrocities against Japan and Germany were also unnecessary and unjustified. Or the first World War. How many millions of members of the working class does the government or US Government have to kill, maim and enslave with conscription before the socialist says, you know what, I think we should go to voluntary mutual aid. The state appears to be too dangerous to tolerate.

[Dave Smith]

They never even really seem to suggest that there'll be a period where we get all of these criminals out and then new people in before we expand their power. Like that never even seems to be stressed. I guess it's like theoretically in there, kind of implied, but it's like there we got this problem we all agree on. Hey look, we got two groups of people, libertarians like me and you, Keith. The, these free market gold bugs. And then we got the, the anti war leftists over here. And we all agree that there's this gang, let's call them the Crips. They just committed a genocide, man. They're killing tens of thousands of people. They're starting wars, they're murdering little girls in a school, all for no reason. They're just horrible, horrible, you know, and we go, man, we disagree on everything, but we could come together that this group, the Bloods, what they just did was the most evil thing ever. We hate them. And they're like, hey, what do we disagree about again? And they go, oh, we disagree about health care and what's the disagreement? And they're like, oh, we say put the Bloods in charge. We're like, wait, what? These bloods, these same bloods is who you want to put in charge. And they go, ah, well, maybe we'll get like some new people in the gang. But like the same mechanism is what we're going to use for this that you go, you're going to get some new people in the gang. Like, do you have all of the new people in the gang there yet? Go, it's about 95 still the old people, but we'd like them to start having much more power right away. I mean, come on, you got to admit, guys, like, on the face of it, that does sound kind of absurd, right? Listen, man, I hope, Keith, I hope to continue this actually as a conversation. I would love to do a thing with me and you and maybe two democratic socialists who we like all get together and, and talk about these things. But I'm sorry, man, like, we're not going to go down without a fight on this stuff because you guys are just wrong about this. It's like free Austrian economics is correct. There are laws of economics. If you want to pay attention to them, that's nice. If you don't, they're still going to exist. And there, there's the, the matter of human liberty and dignity and prosperity. All of these things can only be found in a system of freedom. It's the only way you can ever have to. It's, it's, it's, you know, one of the beautiful things. And I'll say this in closing. I'll give you the final word because we're over time, we gotta wrap. But okay. Austrian economics and libertarian theory might technically be separate. You know, like, they might technically be like. Austrian economics is descriptive, not prescriptive, whereas libertarian theory might be prescriptive or whatever. But there is something beautiful about the fact that like, like you can only have, you can only have prosperity under the conditions of liberty and to the extent that you have them and the same way you can only have prices under the condition of voluntarism. You know, it's not even necessarily that like, like I do think voluntarism is a more ethical and moral way to interact. I think it's immoral to like impose your will on other people who are peaceful. But at the same time, it's also the only way that we can have a real pricing system and a real economy and have real prosperity for prosperity for everyone. It's just what works. Works. What works is people voluntarily interacting. What doesn't work is war and destruction and violence and aggression.

[Keith Knight]

Exactly. And I would be open to. I would love for this to be a continuous discussion. I would happily discuss with Hasan Piker whether or not the United States or world in general should decriminalize all economic activity between consenting adults. That can be the premise. Gene Epstein, you have my phone number. The final word is for those who are are not that interested in economics. Thank you for listening this far. Check out my video. Everything you were taught about World War II is wrong. Churchill's own words. That is a two and a half hour presentation I use. I provided with primary sources making the case that the US and Britain were not justified in entering the Second World War. Dave, thank you so much for having me.

[Dave Smith]

Brother Keith, keep up the great work, man. You're incredible. If you guys don't already, go follow Keith Knight. His work is incredible. Of course, support the Libertarian Institute. Get Keith's book Domestic Imperialism. Really phenomenal book that. You know, if you got anyone in your life who's more like on the left liberal side but is willing to to hear this stuff out, give them a copy of that book. It's very approachable and very readable and make some like if you're looking to hit a liberal with some points that are going to like, maybe stick with them and hit him with some punches like oh damn, that's something to think about.

[Keith Knight]

Out.

[Dave Smith]

This is, this is really the attack in the left from the left, you know, book. So it's really great. You're the man, Keith. We'll do this again real soon. Thank you everybody for watching. Catch you next time. Peace. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why customers have enjoyed progressives name your price tool for years. Now with the name your price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options that fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit progressive.com find a rate that works for you with the name your price tool. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. Last year, I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me to be my

[Keith Knight]

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