Can Social Democracy Save Capitalism? | David Pakman - PT 1

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast with Tom Bilyeu Episode: Can Social Democracy Save Capitalism? | David Pakman - PT 1
Date: September 24, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Bilyeu sits down with David Pakman, a left-leaning political commentator known for his incisive political analysis and ability to cut through the noise of current discourse. Together, they engage in a wide-ranging, probing conversation about the future of American democracy, the 2024 election cycle, populism, the real meaning of “social democracy,” left-right divides, and the underlying reasons for polarization in the U.S. Both recognize their ideological differences but find common ground in the pursuit of understanding and clarity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The 2024 Election as an Inflection Point

• David Pakman opens by emphasizing the stakes of the 2024 election, particularly as an inflection point for MAGA and Trumpism.
  • If Trump wins, it "prolongs MAGA's control of the Republican Party" and shapes party nominations into the next cycle ([01:29]).
  • If he loses, it could signal “the end of Trump’s political career” and potentially the decline of the MAGA movement ([01:29]).
  • Quote:
    “It's probably not only the end of Trump's political career, but it may sort of be it for MAGA as well. So I do think the stakes are high.” – David Pakman [01:29]

2. Fears About a Second Trump Presidency

• Pakman voices concerns about Trump being "unrestrained" in a second term, particularly regarding plans to replace career bureaucrats with partisan loyalists:

  • Risks politicizing key federal departments (Energy, Education, Postal Service).
  • Fear of administrative sabotage and undermining institutions valued in pluralistic democracies ([02:28], [05:21], [07:14]).
  • Quote:
    “The idea of turning those departments into partisan endeavors... sometimes with the goal of essentially just ruining them.” – David Pakman [05:21]

• Tom Bilyeu shares concerns on Trump’s disregard for norms and truth, international unpredictability, and the significance of January 6th as a threat to peaceful transfers of power ([03:30]).

3. Deep State vs. Social Democracy

• Pakman rejects “deep state” rhetoric as unproductive and instead frames the issue as transparent and open:
  Middle and working-class Americans have “disproportionately little political power” compared to corporations and the wealthy ([07:25], [09:32]).
  • Advocates for clear language:
    “I kind of prefer the language of social democracy… It’s sort of all out in the open.” – David Pakman [07:25]
  • Clarifies: Not suggesting American middle class is powerless compared to other nations, but compared to U.S. elites ([09:32]).

4. Defining Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism

• Social Democracy:

  • A capitalist system with slightly more regulation and taxation at the top to ensure a baseline quality of life ([10:29]).
  • U.S. states like Connecticut and Massachusetts already resemble Northern European models in key metrics ([10:29]).
  • Focus is not on equality of outcome, but on preventing anyone from falling “too low.”
  • Emphasizes efficient use of tax revenue over simply paying more taxes.
  • Quote:
    “We're not talking about dramatic changes… if you're already in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, etc.” – David Pakman [10:29]

• Democratic Socialism:

  • Involves socializing the means of production or profits from business ([13:39]).
  • Pakman distances himself: “I'm very much not one” ([13:39]).

5. Why Not Socialism?

• Pakman explains his skepticism of government overreach and the track record of extractive authoritarian regimes ([14:42]):
  • History shows high-functioning nations blend markets and government control judiciously.
  • Most Americans, regardless of party, already accept some socialized institutions (military, police, fire, etc.), disagreeing mainly at the margins (healthcare, education).
  • Quote:
    “We're mostly all in the United States on the same page, that there are some areas where socializing makes sense and a bunch of areas where markets make sense. We just disagree about probably a couple of them.” – David Pakman [14:42]

6. The Roots of Left-Right Polarization

• Tom Bilyeu describes left-right political tension as an evolutionary necessity: some value not leaving anyone behind; others stress personal responsibility ([21:48]).

  • Explains the “freeloader problem” and tribal evolution.

• Pakman questions whether the evolutionary angle is as clear-cut. He points to agriculture’s role in enabling specialization but sees freeloader issues as just a part of larger societal systems ([24:40]).

  • Also highlights other drivers: the “narcissism of small differences” in politics, geographic (urban/rural) and cultural divides, and structural issues (Electoral College, gerrymandering).
  • Quote:
    “The differences by their very nature must be amplified... to justify vote for me and not for somebody else.” – David Pakman [19:15]

• Both agree biology (fear responses), environment, and culture play a role, but Pakman advocates for retaining constructive tension between left and right, with appropriate "guardrails":

  • Diverse viewpoints have historically led to progress ([30:14]).
  • "I think that political disagreement is a healthy thing… they all benefited from not everybody being exactly on the same page." – David Pakman [30:14]

7. Facts, Critical Thinking, and Media Literacy

• Tom Bilyeu raises concerns about the lack of shared “ground truth” and diverging interpretations of reality ([37:03]).

  • Suggests biology, beliefs, and values create “distorted prisms” for fact assessment.

• Pakman cites data showing Americans often can’t distinguish facts from opinions. He advocates critical thinking and media literacy education “starting at age 10” as part of the solution ([39:37]).

  • Quote:
    “We should really be teaching both critical thinking and media literacy, probably starting at age everybody that's not partisan.” – David Pakman [39:37]

8. Metrics: GDP, HDI, and Complicating Factors

• The two discuss the limitations of using metrics like GDP to judge national success.
  • Pakman notes Denmark’s strong standing in Human Development Index (HDI) despite a lower GDP, because key needs (healthcare, education) are covered by the state ([44:26]).
  • Tom reflects that competing values (excellence vs. baseline security) shape how each side sees “winning” in a society ([46:46]).

9. On Voting, Intelligence & Voter ID

• Tom Bilyeu raises the controversial question of “dumb people voting,” acknowledging its uncomfortable nature but noting its real-world implications ([50:01]).
  • Pakman responds pragmatically:
    No feasible path for intelligence-based voter restrictions; focus should instead be on “making people less dumb” through education ([50:01]).
  • Explains why proposals like voter ID requirements might disenfranchise certain groups: downstream costs, logistical barriers, etc. ([52:11]).
  • Open to voter ID if access can be truly barrier-free, but skeptical of current motivations ([54:46]).
  • Quote:
    “If we can ensure that the cost aspect, including the downstream cost is dealt with... I'm open to a long runway path to everyone needs an ID with some kind of guarantee...” – David Pakman [54:46]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Election Stakes:
  “It's probably not only the end of Trump's political career, but it may sort of be it for MAGA as well. So I do think the stakes are high.” – David Pakman [01:29]

• On Bureaucratic Neutrality:
  "The idea of turning those departments into partisan endeavors... sometimes with the goal of essentially just ruining them." – David Pakman [05:21]

• On Left-Right Tension:
  “The differences by their very nature must be amplified... to justify vote for me and not for somebody else.” – David Pakman [19:15]

• On Facts and Opinions:
  “Shockingly high number of people misidentified which statements were opinions and which statements were facts.” – David Pakman [39:37]

• On Social Democracy:
  “We're not talking about dramatic changes… if you're already in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, etc.” – David Pakman [10:29]

• On Voter ID:
  “I'm open to a long runway path to everyone needs an ID with some kind of guarantee…” – David Pakman [54:46]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• The 2024 Election and MAGA's Future – [01:29]
• Dangers of Politicized Government Departments – [05:21]
• Deep State vs. Social Democracy – [07:25]
• Social Democracy vs. Democratic Socialism – [10:29], [13:39]
• Critique of Socialism and American Institutions – [14:42]
• Polarization and Its Causes – [19:15], [21:48], [24:40]
• Value of Left-Right Tension – [30:14]
• Measuring Societal Success: GDP vs. HDI – [44:26]
• Media Literacy and Critical Thinking – [39:37]
• The Voter ID Debate – [52:11], [54:46]

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Conclusion

This episode is a thoughtful, multi-layered discussion on American democracy at a crossroads. David Pakman and Tom Bilyeu unpack the nuances of social democracy, the roots and outcomes of polarization, the role of values and metrics in assessing national well-being, and the practical realities of electoral reform and education. Together, they model civil, critical dialogue in an era of profound division, providing listeners with frameworks to think more deeply about where America is—and where it should go next.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. My guest today is David Pakman. He's an insightful left leaning political commentator with biting wit and an ability to cut through the BS of modern political discourse. While he and I don't necessarily agree on the cause or cure of our current economic woes, namely the national debt, inflation and why the cost of living keep skyrocketing, we nonetheless had a great wide ranging conversation on the madness that is the 2024 election cycle. Let me know what you guys think about this interview with David Pacman.

[David Pakman]

Whatever you think about the rigidity or fragility of our democracy, and maybe we'll talk about that, the stakes are higher because this is an inflection point I think for MAGA and Trumpism to some degree. If Donald Trump wins in November, it probably prolongs maga's control of the Republican Party into certainly the midterms in 2020 be into who the Republican Party selects in 2028 as their nominee, whereas particularly with Trump being close to 80, if he loses in November, that'll be a lot of MAGA losses in a row starting in 2018 or underperformances we can say. And it's probably not only the end of Trump's political career, but but it may sort of be it for MAGA as well. So I do think the stakes are high.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And what what is your biggest fear if Trump gets elected?

[David Pakman]

Well, I don't want to be hyperbolic, so I would just look at the first term combined with not having another election to run and therefore being completely sort of unrestrained and unfettered, in addition to openly saying that he's interested in replacing career bureaucrats at so many departments with partizan loyalists and what that do to the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, etc. Is scary to someone with my worldview, which is Sort of a pluralistic respect, our democratic institutions in the kind of mold of. Of Northern Europe.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

For.

[David Pakman]

For my mindset, the idea of that is. Is scary. You know, the more hyperbolic stuff I think I try not to engage with in a blanket way. You know, if there's a specific issue that we want to discuss, we can. Whether it's abortion or something else. But those. Those are my concerns.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You've got a guy who is completely uncouth and breaks sort of the social norms of what it's like to interact with the public. You have somebody that lies voraciously, and obviously that in and of itself is deeply problematic. You have somebody that plays pretty loose and loose and fast with world leaders, and that obviously carries with it a certain amount of risk. You have somebody that has proven that. This is where I want to be very careful about how you view it. But that January 6th was very meaningful in terms of a legitimate attempt to undermine, maybe the most gentle word, to undermine the traditional peaceful transfer of power. And you put that all together and you have something that is certainly directionally not where you want to see us end up.

[David Pakman]

I agree with all of that, and I think there's, of course, more to it. Well, it sounds like we're going to talk about the economy in more detail, but certainly economically, the sort of blind tariff idea that he's now pushing, which seems like it would be bad for both businesses and individuals in the United States, concerns me directionally. I don't like the straining of relationships with our traditional Western allies that we saw under Trump. And I know that there's a view that it's good to shake things up and to keep people guessing and on their toes. I don't know that it's been demonstrated that generically that that's a good thing. I think under Trump and the way he executed it, it certainly was not. So, yeah, I think what you laid out certainly reflects my beliefs, and I would even go beyond it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, what would be the most meaningful things that you would push beyond that that raise the stakes of this particular election?

[David Pakman]

I think it's the ones I mentioned, including turning government departments into partizan political departments when they're really not supposed to be. And I don't know. You know, this isn't like the most viral and click inducing topic, but I don't know that a lot of people necessarily understand that a lot of the employees of these government departments, whatever you think about the missions of the departments, these are not political actors. Privately, I'm sure a lot of these employees vote but they transcend send administrations. They work under Democratic administrations and Republican administrations. And they're really career bureaucrats that are doing so much of the diplomacy work and, and bureaucratic work. And it's a good thing that that's the way it is. And so the idea of turning those departments into partisan endeavors, sometimes with the goal of essentially just ruining them. Right. I mean, Department of Education is one where it's been overtly stated that many of these MAGA people don't even think there should be a federal Department of Education and just kind of let states figure it out or even let municipalities figure it out. Or when it comes to the US Postal Service, another great example of politicizing in order to then destroy, to allow private business to fill that role. I think all of that is extraordinarily dangerous. And when you look around the world at the countries that have gone in that direction, they are not the countries that Democrats nor Republicans will often say that's the country we want to be like. And when you look at the countries with the strong business environments, low unemployment, high level of quality of life, they aren't doing those things. They kind of respect this separation with these bureaucratic departments. So I think that's a huge deal.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What do you think about people that think that there's. Whether you call it the managerial class or the deep state, that that begins to pose its own threat to democracy,

[David Pakman]

I hesitate to engage with that without a disclaimer, which is that there are thoughtful, realistic ways to engage with what is in many cases a two tiered society or even multi tiered society. Usually when your entry point into it is talking about the deep state or the managerial class, terms that, for example, like Vivek Ramaswamy would use half a dozen times each time I would interview him, it starts us off in what in my opinion is a more sort of conspiratorial and unproductive direction. I kind of prefer the language of social democracy, which is that it's not. You don't need to look under rocks or for the deep state or the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergs or whatever the case may be. It's sort of all out in the open. Princeton has studied it and the, the desires of the wealthy are just and corporations are far more likely to be made law or to be reflected by lobbyists, etc. You don't need to go into deep state to recognize that the middle class and the lower middle class, the working class, however you want to define it, have disproportionately little political power in the United States. So that I think is what we really should be engaging with. And for me, even raising deep state as a term in the discussion doesn't really add anything. It certainly doesn't clarify anything.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's really interesting. So first, I will flag myself fully as somebody who is paranoid about the deep state, but we can come back to that and hopefully you can talk some reason into me. But I, I'm really intrigued by this idea that the middle class and working poor in America are disproportionately powerless compared to other nations. So certainly social democracy is something that's on my list of things that I want to discuss with you. I would not have seen that interpretation of that coming. So if you can tell, you might.

[David Pakman]

I might have. I might have explained it. I didn't mean disproportionately powerless relative to other nations. I meant relative to the wealthy and corporations of the United States.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I see, I see. That may have just been my misunderstanding. Okay, so yeah, that seems unassailable.

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

So

[Tom Bilyeu]

paint me a vision of what it is that you want to see as an outcome. So when you think about, like, who should be elected, whether Harris or anybody else, obviously elections will come and go, but there's something that you're driving towards. Before we met, I would have just said offhanded. Social democracy is what he wants. You often reference Denmark. If you don't mind, stack some bricks for us. What, what, what is social democracy? How is it different from democratic socialism? And what would it feel like for America to be that? For the average person, this is a

[David Pakman]

really good way to approach it. So the first distinction between social democracy and democratic socialism is that social democracy is capitalism. It's, it's a form of capitalism. If you look at a place like Denmark, which has an as good or better business environment in terms of what it costs, how long it takes, bureaucracy, etc. For starting a business, when compared to the United States, it is a form of capitalism. It's a slightly more regulated form than we have in some ways in the United States. Now, as we delve into this, I think it's important to mention that depending on where you live, live in the United States, the state you live in may already be very close, not there, but very close to what social democrats like myself are kind of pointing towards. And in fact, if you look at the higher standard of living states in the United States, so these are places like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, etc. We could look at the list, what's called the HDI, the Human Development Index, which is a kind of blended metric that considers health and, and longevity, per capita income, education. It's sort of like a blended metric that tells you kind of like how good are the basic building blocks of life in the States. In the United States, where it's going well, Connecticut, Massachusetts, et cetera, it's almost identical to countries like denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc. It's very equivalent. So we're very close to what social Democrats want already in much of the United States. And the difference between social democracy and what I think a lot of the center right Republicans want. This is not necessarily talking about MAGA now, but, but a lot of center right Republicans involves taking just a little more at the very, very top to ensure that no one drops below a certain level. We're just kind of, it's not a quality of outcome. It's not socialism, it's certainly not communism or Marxism. It's basically saying, here's the current sort of range of outcomes. What we want to do is set up something a little closer to equality of opportunity, that no one falls too low. And usually the way you do that is with a little more taxation at the very top. That all being said, I don't think it has to be that way. I mean, I'm not someone who goes around saying we need to pay more in taxes. To be totally honest, I am frustrated every April with how much I pay in taxes. I would actually like to pay less. I think it's the distribution and the use of a lot of the tax money that that's the problem. But now we're getting more nuance. But to kind of step back at the 30,000 foot view, we're not talking about dramatic changes, especially if you're already in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, etc.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, super helpful. So for anybody that doesn't know what is democratic socialism, you know, really a

[David Pakman]

democratic socialist should tell you because one of, one of the things I found is whether you're explaining what Jordan Peterson meant or whether you're explaining what democratic socialism is, usually the adherence to those ideologies will come back and say you either don't understand it or didn't explain it correctly. So democratic social socialism, as best as I can explain it, is actually a form of socialism where to different degrees and in different ways, the means of production when it comes to corporations or the profits from businesses are socialized. The way in which it's done and implemented depends. But I think it would be best for, for a socialist to explain it. I'm very Much. Not one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, fair enough. I get that. The reason that I ask is for any of us to intelligently navigate the world, we have to have some sense, even if it's just a heuristic about that. So let me ask something that will get to the same idea. Why don't you want to be. Why don't you want America to be a socialist country?

[David Pakman]

Well, I have seen in looking at the last 500 years of history, as well as looking at the world today, that the best outcomes seem to happen when there is no more authoritarianism from government than what is arguably necessary for the size of the population. And I'll explain that in a moment and that the countries that have what might be described in a book like why Nations Fail as Extractive Institutions sometimes will do well in the short term. Like, for example, the Soviet Union had a period during which you saw economic growth and to a degree, you saw innovation, but you saw it under fundamentally extractive government institutions. And so it hit a limit. And looking at the Cold War shows you kind, kind of what happens when those limits are hit. So my starting point is, and I know that if you look at the comments on my YouTube channel, this might come as a shock to some of your listeners. I actually am not about more government involvement or more government control than can really be justified and demonstrated by what's going to generate kind of the best outcomes. So for me, I don't see any reason for a government to say we're not going to let markets dictate, you know, where the mobile phone market goes, for example. I don't, I don't see a big problem with that. I think it's a perfectly fine and great thing both for innovation and competition, for Apple and Samsung and Google and whoever, to compete and to let markets dictate the flow of resources. I think that there are some specific areas where this is not ideal. And what's really interesting is myself and someone who's on the political right probably agree on most of them. Like, for example, most Republicans agree we should socialize the military. We shouldn't have all of these different militaries. And if we need to do X or Y in another country, well, these are like kind of private militaries now. There are mercenary groups. That's not really what I mean. We all generally agree, yeah, the military should be part of the government. That makes sense. We, we usually agree, Republicans, Democrats, independents, that cities shouldn't have competing police forces. It makes sense to socialize police and fire only like kind of extreme libertarians would disagree with that. My view is that there's like a couple other areas where a little more socializing makes sense. I think health care is one of them, although I'm flexible as to the way we get health care for everybody. I think public education is an area. We're socializing a little more than Republicans want to make sense. But the point of presenting it this way is that we're mostly all in the United States on the same page, that there are some areas where socializing makes sense and a bunch of areas where markets make sense. We just disagree about probably a couple of them.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, that I want that to be true, but people are so fiery in their reactions to each side. If we're as close as you're saying and you Sound Very reasonable, Mr. Pac Man, I will give you that. So why then is there so much collision between the left and the right right now? What is the swing towards populism all about if we're really close to the outcome that you're saying we should be aiming towards?

[David Pakman]

Well, I want to be clear that I think we're close ideologically, right? Like if you look at opinion surveys about abortion, or should taxation be used to make sure no one drops below a certain standard of living? Or does it make sense to provide some amount of health to everybody, regardless of ability to pay? Ideologically, in opinion polling, we are closer than we've ever been and kind of more united than we've ever been. The electoral outcomes don't reflect that. There's a bunch of different reasons why, and I'll just tell you a couple of them. Number one, there Is this thing called the narcissism of small differences, which is that the outcome when there is agreement in a lot of areas, but you still have elections and fundraising and political fights over who gets to represent US in Washington D.C. the differences by their very nature must be amplified. If you have two Republicans in a primary running against each other and they mostly agree about abortion's bad and tax should be lower right. If they agree on 10 things, the race will become about the two things on which they disagree. So this is just like standard politics to be expected, the differences must be amplified in order to justify vote for me and not for somebody else. So that's number one. Number two, there are still pretty significant cultural differences regionally in the United States. And I've spent a bunch of time in different conservative areas and life day to day is often really different. Living in some of the kind of liberal cities of the United States as compared to like, for example, I spent time in northern Indiana where people spend a lot of time at gun ranges and in mega churches. Life culturally is very different. So the environments also make people believe that our differences are be greater than they are. And then thirdly, as a result of at the federal level, the electoral college in terms of how we elect presidents and gerrymandering at the state level also exacerbates these differences by virtue of a lot of factors related to how we elect candidates. And so this is not me pretending like everything's hunky dory. Everybody basically agrees. But there is this kind of shared moral understanding that I think covers a a bunch of the United States. And the reason that you see the kind of vitriol is the reasons I mentioned, I think amplified by impersonal communication on social media where you're not actually sitting face to face with somebody and talking.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so let me give you a. Because that does not match with the way that I see people interacting with each other. My take on it is probably not as well thought out as yours, but I'll give you a rough swag. I think that naturally humans are divided left and right. I think that from an evolutionary perspective it is inevitable that you will end up with tensions between these two sides. That there are people for whom the default emotional stance, which I'm sure paints their moral vision becomes you can't leave people behind. And that it makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective why you would need people in the tribe that are like that. When you think of humans as storing calories for the future, pre refrigerators in the bodies of other people. Which is sort of a weird thing when you first hear it. But when you really think about it, it's like I went on a hunt. I was very productive. This time I come back with the animal. You didn't get anything. I'm gonna feed you. I'm gonna make sure that you don't get left behind, because it could be you next time that ends up getting the kill and not me. And so I am quite literally storing future calories in the form of obligation in you. So cool. We understand why that becomes a thing. But whenever there is an exploitable niche, then someone is going to exploit it. And so you get what you call the freeloader problem. And so that's why you need the people on the right who are about personal responsibility. And no, you can't just eat all of my meat. There's going to be tit for tat. I need to see that you're bringing something to the table as well. So I look at it from that standpoint. You've got this evolutionary bifurcation between types of people that roughly fall into left and right, that roughly can be generalized as people that lead with compassion and other people that lead with responsibility. Everybody's on a spectrum, of course. These are not binary things. But you get that tension now. Somewhere in the 90s, something culturally started to happen. I've often heard it put on Rush Limbaugh. I'm gonna guess that he was more a symptom of something rather than the cause, but that it became really about entrenching in our tribes. Now, I'm not familiar enough with that history to know what he was queuing off of, why he felt like this was the way to go, to begin tearing people down, or if it really was the beginning of independent media with different radio stations becoming popular and getting syndicated. And maybe social media really is just a modern incarnation of that. That certainly is possible, but I think that divide happened long before social media. So I'd love to know if you have a take on that. And then certainly social media exacerbates that thousandfold. But what do you think about that in terms of just naturally people are going to be divided into those two camps, and the tension between them is actually useful. But something has become pathological recently.

[David Pakman]

I'm not sure that the evolutionary case is. Is as clear as you make it out to be in this sense. If we're talking about at the group level. When humans developed agriculture, and by definition, agriculture, one of the big advantages of agriculture was the storing of calories, right In a Different, not, not as obligations, but quite literally, we now are going to be able to start specializing. Not everybody needs to find the daily calories that they need. We're going to have some people specialize and grow way more food than they need. We're going to store it and, or distribute it. And now we're going to be able to start, start investing other people's time in different things that they might be good at. Arguably for some it was, you know, the development of religious beliefs. For others it was starting to look at medicine, transportation, so on and so forth. You already started to have the freeloader problem there. I just struggle. I've not seen evidence that the freeloader problem during the agricultural revolution or even now is really a problem in the sense that I think it's natural that you will have it whenever a technology is developed and advances and opens new doors. And if you look at, you know, we now know more about the agricultural revolution and there was a mixed bag in the sense of not moving around as much, did lead to more contagious disease. And it's not, it's not a panacea. But, but big picture, the agricultural cultural revolution accelerated technological development and, and the development of Homo sapiens in so many ways. Yes, there were some freeloaders who didn't really specialize in anything, but they were still beneficiaries of the fact that we could store food. But I think that's just part of a system and it's hard to argue that humanity didn't benefit in total from that revolution, even despite the freeloaders. So I, I guess my point to go back is it's not obvious to me that the evolutionary case is as clear as you're making it out to be.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, one quick point on that and then I'll step back and see what you do think speaks to it. So agriculture comes around somewhere 10 to 12,000 years ago, but we've been considered humans for roughly 250,000 years. So agriculture is still pretty novel. So from a how the brain would develop standpoint, I think there's a case to be made that you have a much longer period of time where, where there is no way to store food, then you've had one, where there is now. Certainly agriculture has wildly changed our societies and all of that, and we could do a talk on that. But the thing I'm really trying to get to in your worldview is just to understand how you think we end up dividing on the left and right if we want to get rid of left and Right. Are we just trying to nudge people? Because my vision has always been, you want left and right, you want the tension between them, but you want them way closer to the middle than they are now. And so just curious to get your take on what causes this left, right, divide, and where do we want to move people? We're trying to get everyone to the left. We trying to get everyone in the middle. What's that look like?

[David Pakman]

Yeah, I think that laying it out that way is much more in line with my views. And I've said many times that, that I would much rather have a Republican Party that goes back to, you know, sort of like the John McCain Republican Party, where there are disagreements about foreign policy, there are disagreements about taxation. But not only are the disagreements far more substantive, they are disagreements where we are closer to starting with a shared basis in fact. So we say, hey, okay, here are the facts. Now, we might have disagreements about where we want to go, and the best kind of way to go there from a biological standpoint, there's pretty good research that those who end up being what we in the United States we describe as politically conservative tend to have larger fear centers in their brain. In other words, the idea of difference, the idea of change does lights up. I'm not using the right terminology because I'm not. I'm not a neuroscientist, but it sort of. Sort of lights up parts of the brain that are responsible for rejection. And sometimes that rejection comes in the form of fear. Sometimes it comes in the form of disgust, as we see with some of the other social issues. So there's probably a biological aspect to it. I do think that there's a huge urban, rural divide to go back to the environment that you're kind of raised in now. There's probably a sort of vicious cycle in the sense that if you're already, for biological reasons, more suspicious of others or more fearful of different environments, you probably choose to live rurally and around fewer people. So. So, you know, there's kind of a little bit of a chicken egg here, and we're kind of talking about the same thing, but I think that. That. That that's another factor. So we might call it a geographical factor and cultural factors as well that probably date back to how did your family end up in the United States to begin with.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's interesting. I didn't see the curveball there coming at the end. So I think we'll both agree that there's a biological component. There's obviously a very large cultural component. The part I don't yet understand in your worldview is do you want the tension between the two, or do you want to see people leverage cult culture to migrate more either to the center or to the left?

[David Pakman]

I think that it is healthy not to have everyone exactly on the same spot in the political spectrum. So I think we can. We can simultaneously say if we think about the spectrum as a sort of number line, there's a bunch of stuff way over here that's not good for society for a number of different reasons that we can identify all the way on the other side. There's also reasons why, if that were the predominant worldview, that would not be so good. I do think that. That it is better for, you know, if I could sort of snap my fingers and say everybody has the exact views of David Pakman. I think that that's not ideal because I think it's clear that history has shown us that we often make advances when something is pulling one way or the other. And you don't necessarily know in advance which direction the right direction is at any particular moment. I think the critical part is, is we need guardrails. And so, for example, the idea of, well, here's an idea to do something different. The person who didn't win the election still gets to be president. That seems beyond the pale to me of the sort of pull push that. That we need. So, no, I think that political disagreement is a healthy thing. And there's. There's many countries, including the countries that I think of as interesting models. You know, my forthcoming book, I talk, you know, Northern Europe is sort of like, cliche. Of course, everybody in with my worldview talks about Northern Europe, but I talk about Uruguay around 2010. I talk about the Social Democrats in Germany in the 2000s. I talk about the Carol estate in India. And I think these are all different sort of scenarios, but they all benefited from not everybody being exactly on the same page. I hope I'm answering the question clearly, which is, no, I don't think the ideal thing is everybody matches my personal example, exact political worldview.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

No, that makes a lot of sense. So what now? I am taking that information. I'm trying to map it to where you want to move people to. So we're starting with the base assumption that there's something very meaningful about this particular election. The collision between the two ideas we went through. Certainly what's going on on the right in terms of Trump representing a movement to turn bureaucracies into partisan entities that really should exist well beyond that, that should be able to work for either side. That there is a fundamental undermining of the democratic process that your vision of the left, which is obviously where you want to see us end up, we're actually getting quite close to that, that there's just a few more things we didn't get into necessarily deeply. About one thing that you threw off the cuff, which was basically we're just trying to even make sure that everybody has a relatively similar starting point. But that makes a lot of sense. And so if those are the two visions, then it becomes a question of do you trust yourself, or does anybody that holds that position trust themselves enough to say, hey, everybody, follow me, this is where we want to be? Or do they say, look, I want to put my idea out there, I want to argue it as much as possible, but the last thing I would want is for anybody to just blindly follow what I'm saying, because I know there will be second and third order consequences that I cannot predict. And that probably more than anything sums up my problem with the current political structure everywhere that I have looked at, which is it always boils down to somebody thinking that they know the path forward, rather than running something I call the physics of progress, where you're holding yourself accountable to metrics, which it does not seem like we do.

[David Pakman]

Certainly I so a couple different things there. If you there is a certain egocentrism associated with, I would argue, people who do what you and I do in the sense of like. Like it occurred to us that we should be speaking with microphones and that it's something other people should listen to. Right. So there's like, on some level, there is some ego associated with that. I think for people who run for elected office, it's similar. It's, hey, of all the people, I think I'm the one that people should vote for and put me in the position of power to then go and do things. One of the things I always tell my audience is I don't, I do not believe that I am the ultimate source of truth.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Truth.

[David Pakman]

Everything I say should be fact checked. My views should change if I'm presented with contradictory information, for example. And it's good to be skeptical of anybody who says that they are the ultimate source of truth. This is one of the things to kind of get back to the election dynamics. You know, over the last however many years it's been. Donald Trump has told us he knows more than the scientists, he knows more than the generals, he knows more than the doctors, he knows more than the epidemiologists, he knows more than the, the senators, he knows. Right. That to me runs very much counter to exactly what you're talking about, which is, well, hold on a second. Before we bring everybody along with whatever idea we have, we should establish how it is that we're going to determine what is real and what is not, what works and what doesn't work. So kind of as like a baseline level, I give my audience my best guess at the time, subject to revision based on new information that's coming forward. So. So I think that goes to the first part of your question, which is this idea that, that we just impose, here's what we should do without necessarily knowing if it's the best thing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, very much so. To me, just by way of quick heuristic, the right way to run a government is what Lincoln called a team of rivals that you actively court. People who think differently than you. Now, now, whether Lincoln did the following or not, I don't know. But this is certainly my worldview that you, the reason you bring together a team of rivals is you were trying to red team, blue team, ideas that you can measure the outcome of, that you will have stated ahead of time what the desired outcome is. And then did this initiative lead us to that or not? And I think there are a couple things that end up breaking that one is that everything is just so complicated that it can be very hard to get a definitive answer. And so you would need, literally, certainly multiple administrations would have to share an end goal so that people would need to state, this is where I'm trying to take us. These Are the things we're going to try, Dear public, these are the outcomes, reporting them as honestly as they can, in fact, inviting their rivals to report on it so that we can all look at it. But then the other thing is that I, to your earlier point, I don't think we any longer have a shared set of facts. Now, this is the thing that, that I wrestle with tremendously because I don't know that there are facts to share. So when I. There obviously is ground truth physics, but we don't even understand physics. So everything that we engage in is interpretation to some level. So then I ask myself, okay, what. How do we influence the thing that causes us to look at something but interpret it a different way? As far as I can tell, it's biology, beliefs and values. So values sort of speaks to what you were talking about. Did you grow up? Rural biology speaks to. Do you have the larger fear centers in the brain? And then beliefs are just outright choices, but people don't realize their choices. But you put those three together, and now people can really distort the lens through which they look at things. And so whether it's social media, a bigger cultural movement, the debt cycle, which we haven't talked about, but I think is a huge part of this or all of it, I think the way in which people are assessing the facts, just the, the distorted prisms that the left and the right are looking at things through, is getting more and more divergent. So they can look at the same thing and see something wildly different. Do you see one? Does that make sense to you? And if it does, do you see a way to unwind it, the way to it?

[David Pakman]

So I have an entire chapter, and there's really probably in some way two or three chapters in my forthcoming book. There's a chapter called what are facts? Not what are the facts, but what are facts? And there's some very. It's. It's good, but it's also really scary. Pulp. Study data from Pew Research center where people were presented with 10 statements and they were just asked, indicate whether this is a fact or an opinion. Right? So, like, if I tell you chocolate ice cream is the best ice cream, I think you and I both would say, well, that's, that's of course an opinion. And if I said to you, based on current technology, humans cannot live without oxygen, we would say, okay, well, that's, that's a fact. A very high percentage of people, I don't want to quote it because I don't have it in front of me, but a Shockingly high number of people misidentified which statements were opinions and which statements were facts. And this is very much visible in our politics. You know, when someone says millions of people died from the COVID vaccine, that is a statement of fact, not an opinion. It's either true or it's not. And we don't have any evidence that millions of people died from the vaccine. But to really think about vaccine policy, to pick something, you have to understand whether that is a statement of opinion or fact and whether there is any basis to make some of these claims. So. So I completely agree with you that there is this more divergent situation. I think where I disagree is there are. I think it's dangerous to fall too far into. I don't even really know that we have facts anymore. Not that that's what you said, but you were sort of saying that there's this ambiguity for you about, about even kind of figuring this out. So I think that that is a major problem now. The solution, I think is a combination of we should really be teaching both critical thinking and media literacy, probably starting at age everybody that's not partizan, although there are state boards of education, including Texas, that don't want that taught in public school. I won't speculate as to why we should ask some of the people that don't want it taught, but we know we get to. I taught a couple of college courses and I had 20 year olds in my class where basic media literacy like, hey, here's something, here's a message from media. How would you even start evaluating whether what you just heard is. Is true? Nothing, just no basis to even evaluate media messages. So. So I think that the way to push back against it is critical thinking and media literacy, probably starting at age 10.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's very interesting because yes, ultimately people are going to have to understand how to look at something and determine whether it can be validated or not. Not. I think the big catch is going to be that so many things are going to be hard to invalidate or validate. Or that as they say, there's statistics, lies and damn lies. And that even when you're looking at the data itself, the conclusions that you draw from it can be very jarring. So for instance, yeah, I heard you talk a lot about. About. I heard you talk a lot about Denmark. And okay, we want to. That's sort of a quick, obviously just rough sketch of where we want to end up. So I looked up Denmark. Where are they at in the GDP? So Denmark is 34th, I think I wrote this down. They're roughly 34, 32nd to 36th. Lies. 38th. They're 38th. Okay, so nominal GDP, Denmark is 38th. US obviously is number one. One. But if you look it up in terms of GDP, PPP, so purchasing power parity per capita, Denmark is 52nd, but the US is number two. And so I was like, wait a second, who's number one? And it's China. So I was like, wait a second. In something that I care deeply about, a communist country outperforms the US and so then I'm like, hold the phone. So now I go from, hey, GDP is a great way to just shorthand think about like what's, what is, and what is a KPI that you could look at to say we're making the right decisions, are leading us in a good direction. And then all of a sudden I was like, yeah, like go democracy, go America. Amazing, Amazing. And then the people that I think are the most, not the most backwards because just like brutal authoritarian regimes where people are starving to death, Stalin, Mao, like those would be way worse. But a, a place I would not want to be living under is actually outperforming us on a metric that I care deeply about. So I was like, wow.

[David Pakman]

So this is super interesting. There's a bunch of stuff there and you're getting to. I mean this, this is why the corporate media environment just, it just can never really inform people in any kind of deep and nuanced way about this stuff. So a couple different things. Number one, what I think it makes more sense to look at than nominal gdp. That's a good, that's a good start. China being very high to some degree is because it's a pseudo communist country, although they've become capitalist in so many of the industries. But that's a different conversation because by virtue of being a communist country, there are entirely large swaths of products that are manufactured in China and are subsidized by the government, which artificially makes the peepee appear very, very high. So like that's a detail where even just looking at pee, you need to understand more about it. So like, ok, that's super interesting. Denmark, out of roughly out of close to 200 countries, Denmark's basically at the, at the line of the top quarter, right? So 50 out of 200 roughly would be like you're at the line of the 25th percentile. What you have to understand about Denmark is you don't have to pay for health care out of that. Like you're not buying health care. You can take that completely out. You're also not buying education because education is paid for through taxation. So that's kind of interesting because if you were to disaggregate that in countries, whether that's something that you're paying for out of pocket versus countries that you're not, that would also kind of change the numbers. And then just to throw a different metric out, you know, earlier I told you about how some of the blue states in the United States have very high HDI Human Development index, which includes life expectancy at birth. How much schooling do you expect to get? PPP is one of those. Denmark is number five in the world. So the outcome that they're having as far as, as far as quality of life, once you understand, okay, 25th percentile with regard to. But you don't have to worry about health care costs driving you to bankruptcy and all these different things, the quality of Life There is fifth out of nearly 200 countries. That's pretty good.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah. This to me. So this, to this, the point that you made about China is exactly what I was trying to convey is at the surface it seems one way, but then as you start to dig in, you realize, wait, there's all these confounding variables. The only way that they went from Ma's China to Xi Jinping's China is to open up capitalism and begin to let that thrive. But there still is the hammer of the state. And so it's like, oh God, like very complicated. And then the hdi, that kind of thing then begins to ask a question of values. So going back to my notion that your frame of reference, that the distorted lens through which you view or attempt to view facts is built up of biology, beliefs and values. So now you value, for instance, and I'm literally just thinking of this as you're talking, people may hate me for this, but this is true. You value ranking higher on the hdi, whereas I value people being able to play for the championship team. And so I'm looking at what is the place that creates the most innovation, innovation that attracts the best and the brightest from all over the world. And that's thrilling to me. But I also am self aware enough to know most people are not going to enjoy playing that game. And so now you get some of what I think is happening now, which again to plant a flag is not time to talk about yet, I don't think. But the where we're at in the debt cycle I think speaks to a lot of the unrest that we're seeing. I think it speaks to a lot of the rise in population because all of a sudden kids are like, yo, boomers in their 20s had it way better than I have in my 20s, which is true. And they have access to a freakish amount of information, so they know that's true. And so there's all kinds of things from the food that we're taking in, toxins, all that stuff, which is probably not a conversation for you and I, but you've got all that happening, but then you also just have. It feels super lame for somebody coming into their early 20s right now. And they're very aware of it. And you now have them look at a country, their own country, sending foreign aid everywhere. And even if it doesn't actually impact them like a, they're not going to realize that they're just like billions of dollars are leaving, but they're going to feel some kind of way about, about that. And so now you throw social media onto the fire, as you mentioned earlier, which is further distorting those lenses that people are looking at this tribalism being innate to our sense of being. And you just get these two groups jettisoning away from each other. And when you look back historically, this happens like clockwork on that debt cycle. And then it ultimately blows up and you get really bad things happening. Which is why for me, I also think that this election is unusually important. What do you do about dumb people that get to vote? And I say that truly with love, knowing that some people just, they fall below an IQ level where they will be able to parse these very difficult issues. And P.S. i'm actually perfectly willing to accept I'm one of the dumb people that's below the line that can adequately parse these things. I'm perfectly fine with that. But I'm just saying, what do you do do with that reality?

[David Pakman]

You know, I, I think my approach is pragmatic. I've had so many conversations with viewers over the years when they call in and they say, David, you know, there should be restrictions on who's allowed to have kids. There should be restrictions on who's allowed to vote. There should be some kind of test where you have to at least understand, you know, you have to understand something. Or I think it's. I, I don't think about it much much because that's not how we're going to improve the country or the world, at least as far as the United States is concerned. I really try to focus on where we can make a difference. And there is no path to some kind of intelligence test to vote legally, nor is there any political will to do it. I think either party that proposed it would do nothing for them, it would be a political loser. So, so I honestly don't think about, I think what you do is you say how can we make people less dumb? And that's what goes to, to use your term. I think that's what gets to can we start teaching media literacy? Can we start teaching critical thinking earlier? What can we do about how should if at all, social media be regulated? You know, I think these are the sorts of things I think it's more useful to think about about because I just don't think there's a path forward to solving any problem we identify with, figuring out how to prevent people from voting. Now, I will tell you there is a political party that thinks that they will do better if they can prevent people from voting. It's the, it's the Republican Party. Now we can argue about the reasons why and what they claim are the reasons. And you know, it'll, they will have their explanation. But over the last, I mean, it kind of goes back to Mitt Romney where they started thinking about this. Mitt Romney, state director in Pennsylvania, was talking about using voter ID as a tool to reduce Democratic turnout so that Romney would win Pennsylvania in 2012 and thus the White House.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why would that automatically affect Democratic voters?

[David Pakman]

Because all of the proposals that voter ID specifically or which one are you talking about?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Voter idea.

[David Pakman]

Voter ID is an interesting one. One, the people who want voter ID will usually say something like, well, Trump says you need an ID to buy bread, so you should have an ID to vote. It's not true. You need an ID to buy bread. So in case, I don't know when you last bought bread, but you don't need one. But often what's stated is the ID is free, so why would it be an impediment to anybody? The thing about the IDs is depending on what state you live in and the way that it's conceived, conceived of. Very often in order to get the id, you need subsequent documents that lower income people are less likely to have. And those documents aren't always free to get, for example, birth certificates. I know when I had to get a copy of my daughter's birth certificate, there was a cost associated with it and I had to go to city hall and it had to be only during a three hour window on a Tuesday, during which people who are working may struggle to be able to go. Very often the documents you need to get the voter ID or the voter ID itself can only be done in certain parts of the state, often requiring transportation, which itself costs money. So anyway, I think the idea here is that there's a calculation that's been made in certain states that if we put in place a voter ID requirement in a certain way, it will disproportionately disfavor groups that we don't think are super likely to vote for us. It's similar to the idea of reducing the number of polling places, places in urban areas which, as we know there's an urban rural divide. In rural America, there's rarely lines to vote. In urban America, there are often lines to vote. If you reduce the number of places you can vote or reduce early voting hours, you will make the lines even longer. It is disproportionately Democrats geographically who vote there. Some of them say, I've got to get to work, I don't have time to stand in this line. You can depress the Democratic turnout without hurting the Republican turnout. These are the sorts of things. Things.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Got it. So on voter id, this is one of those that I may just not know enough about to understand why it's controversial, but it seems so self evident to me that you should have to have an ID to vote. Just by way of. And I, I know the punchline already is that there isn't any voter fraud, but if people don't have IDs, I, I haven't looked at it, but it just seems if people don't have IDs, how do you know whether there's voter fraud or not?

[Advertiser/Commercial Voice]

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[Tom Bilyeu]

But why isn't the approach to make getting to voter ID easier rather than just saying you don't need id.

[David Pakman]

I actually would not be against a protocol for requiring voter ID if it included a guarantee that nothing that you would need to have in order to get the ID costs money. Right. So because it's very easy to say the ID is so free, but if you have to accumulate expenses to obtain the documents to get the id, I think that it's a problem and it's arguably a poll tax. So there's also like a legal and constitutional argument here if there is a cost to obtain the documents to get the id, if we could have a system, I don't know if we could, but I'm open to it. So I'm not, it's, you know, I'm not irrationally just like, no, no id, I don't have a problem with it. If we can ensure that the cost aspect, including the downstream cost is the dealt with and there is a long enough Runway period that there is no like a lot of the problem now is trying to implement with six weeks to go, hey, you're going to need an ID and sometimes actually just lying that you're going to need an ID and you're not really going to just to try to dissuade people from voting because it sounds confusing or intimidating. I'm not against it. Like I'm I'm open to a long Runway path to Everyone needs an ID with some kind of guarantee and that has to include transportation. So like can you get the ID by mail? Well, a lot of Republicans don't like that for the same reasons they don't like vote by mail. They say that that's ripe for fraud. So I'm not unreasonable in that there are paths towards that that I would be okay with. It's just not really the motivation of the Republicans who are trying to pass voter ID with six weeks to go before an election.

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