Capitalism, For & Against: A University Seminar

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everyone. Welcome to Morals and markets. Glad to see everyone here tonight. Just as a reminder, before we get started, please keep yourself muted while Dr. Salzman is giving his opening remarks so we don't have any background noise breaking up the talk. Also, you can utilize the chat at the bottom of the screen to make comments or ask questions about specific parts of Dr. Salzman's talk. You can also utilize the reactions button on the bottom right hand to click the raise hand symbol if you'd like to get in line for the Q A during Dr. Salzman's remarks. And last but not least, I'm going to post an abstract for tonight's meeting in the chat, including sources and supplementary readings that Richard's put together for tonight's meeting. With that being said, tonight we'll be discussing capitalism, a university seminar. And with that, I hand things off to you, Richard. [00:00:55] Speaker B: Thank you, Scott, and thank you everyone for joining. I'm going to, as I normally do, this is a 90 minutes slot, but I'm going to spend the first 20, maybe at most 25 minutes with commentary. Some of this is made available through audio and Spotify and elsewhere for morals and markets, so it's for the audio audience as well. But I'm glad to see some faces here tonight. What I intend to do tonight is have you feel like you're a student at Duke University showing up day one to my university seminar, which is titled capitalism for and against. Now, just to read into the record the description I gave for tonight's version of morals and markets, which we do monthly, by the way, here's how I wrote it up. Social science faculty at top tier american universities typically lean leftward ideologically, and thus don't present a case for capitalism. For the past six years at Duke, I've conducted a popular seminar for first year students, which assesses both the pros and cons of capitalism. And in this session, this morals and markets. Tonight, I'll recount the seminar's origins. I'll share the syllabus with you, I'll screen share it, we'll review some of the reading, most of the readings, and then I'm going to convey some of these student reactions. Now, just to be clear, seminars at Duke, and I think this is true. At most universities, a seminar specifically is defined as a small group of students, no more than 18 at Duke. So it's capped out at 18, and it's in a nice conference room with a big conference table, and the students are sitting around the table and I orchestrate the discussion. I obviously give them the readings and structure the material. But it's not me lecturing at them. That's the nature of a seminar. Now, I do do lectures where I'll stand up on a stage and I'll use PowerPoint, and I'm pretty much lecturing at them. Those are usually 50, 60, 70 students. So I just want to give you a feel of what the room looks like, so to speak. Now, background as well, I've taught at Duke now going on, I think it's almost 13 years now. So I've been teaching at Duke since 2010. I'm in the PP and e program, which stands for philosophy, politics, and economics. It's an interdisciplinary program. I put this together myself in 2019. I was asked by someone in the department. They knew my interest, they knew my background, whether I'd be willing to put together a new seminar never before taught at Duke. And we tossed around some ideas. I came up with this idea. They liked the idea. It did have to get approved by a curriculum committee at Duke. I had to make a case for it. I had to show them a mock setup syllabus, and it was approved. So the other thing to remember as you're watching this, this is not a syllabus I took over from somebody else. It's something I started from scratch, another point which might be of interest to you. I didn't do this when I put my course together, but a couple of years ago, I went around the Internet looking for capitalism syllabi. And I don't have to tell you how bad they are. They're just terrible. They're either all anti capitalist or they just use the course to grind other axes. So I think this is really unique. I'm actually hoping that the more I teach this and I do adjust it over time, the more this can become a model for teaching capitalism in other universities. Now, that's. As to background, I think that's pretty much all I wanted to give you on background. Now, what I thought I would do is we did test this to make sure it works, to share the syllabus. And I'll start walking through the syllabus now. Scott, can you confirm for me that it's visible? Okay. Scott says yes. Now, this syllabus is, I don't know, maybe six or seven pages long, not too long, but I just wanted to walk through it. So now let's kind of pretend that you're a student in the class, and I say, welcome to this seminar. I was talking to David Kelly offline, and sometimes the students will file in, and the professor will just kind of routinely go through the syllabus. Here's the syllabus. Here's what you have to do. Here's the grading, which can be a little routine. So on some occasions I've come in, and in order to shock them a little bit, I just come in, I introduce myself, but I launch into a five minute tirade against capitalism. I sound like a Marxist or a Maoist. I bring up all the arguments about alienation and expropriation and crises and exploiting the worker. And after about four or five minutes, I just stop, and a pregnant pause. I wait, and then I launch into a five minute defensive cap. Capitalism is wonderful. Capitalism is a cornucopia of prosperity. It gives me liberty. It gives me freedom to choose. And the students, by this time, their eyes are bugging out, like, what the hell is happening here? Because I'm kind of role playing, but I'm giving them summary arguments that of course we're going to be covering in the seminar. But the idea of someone standing up and just giving five minutes on each for and against is dramatic. It can be very dramatic and very arresting. I've tried other opening techniques, but that one I've tried before, and it's worked pretty well. Now, you could see I'm actually in the middle of this right now. I taught a session today from this course, so I teach it on Tuesdays. This is a two and a half hour seminar, by the way, so it goes for two and a half hours once a week. So I do give them a break in between. I give them a 15 minutes break in between halfway through, but it gives you the sense of how intense you have to be. 18 people in a room discussing a set of ideas for two and a half hours. It can be very intense. Now let me read the description of the course again for those on the audio right up front. Description Capitalism is a formidable and durable social system worthy of scientific, objective study. Only three centuries old, it has both proponents and opponents, each wielding strong and weak arguments. In this seminar, we investigate, analyze, and debate the nature of capitalism and assess the validity, or not, of the various procon claims. Our discussions will be informed not only by history, but by competing theories in ethics, politics, and economics. The main proponents to be examined are conservatives, libertarians, and objectivists. The main opponents to be examined are socialists, environmentalists, and feminists. We'll also assess the pros and cons pertinent to select topics and controversies relating to capitalism. Now I want to also read. I'm not going to read every sentence in this syllabus. But I also want to read something about eligibility and free and fair speech. The free and fair speech part my colleagues and others at Duke have begun to put in from the standpoint of students who are easily triggered and maybe overly sensitive. But first, let me read the eligibility part. The seminar is for first year students only. So now get this. When you go through the syllabus and see the readings, imagine to yourself this is a 17 year old, and my experience has been the intelligence level of these students is really quite high. The fact that they can absorb and analyze the material I'm about to show you will surprise you. Now, I'm not sure it's unique to Duke. I'm sure this is available elsewhere. But there's a serious sneer to a student coming in. And freshmen, especially a freshman in a seminar, is really exposing themselves in a way, because when you're in a seminar, you can't hide. You can't hide in the back room of a big auditorium and sleep through class. You're at the table, everyone's facing each other, and you really have to be prepared. Anyway, to continue. The seminar is for first year students only who are intellectually curious about the social sciences. It's an excellent introduction to key concepts and principles in philosophy, politics, and economics. You can see that PP and e there. I'm pitching my program. No participant is required to be pro capitalist, anti capitalist, or undecided, and no actual leanings enjoy a privilege or suffer a prejudice. In short, all views are welcomed. The main requirement is objectivity. Now, free and fair speech section the seminar examines the best and worst arguments for and against controversial claims. Students may hear and debate unconventional views, not feelings, but ideas. Reasons and arguments are requisite and are the basis of grading. You'll face challenges to your own arguments, so express them as clearly as possible and try to meet and refute objections decisively. Arguments and writings will help you earn a top grade if they're supported objectively, meaning with facts, evidence and logic, and if they're defended persuasively. All right, so you see the heavy emphasis here on rationality, objectivity, evidence don't go by feelings. That's pretty clear up top. Now I'm going to skip over other things, like attendance. The honor code obviously has to be followed. Required books. Now look at the required books. The communist manifesto. Now that's available mostly online, but some of them will go get the paper version. Their reaction, by the way, to this is really quite remarkable because some of them worry that this is a 600 page book. And if you know, it's actually a pamphlet, it's a very brief and actually fun to read pamphlet. Now, they also have to buy Capitalism, the unknown ideal by Ayn Rand. And the third one, a more recent book, Capitalism for realists, is really a very good book and very balanced. And rutar does an excellent job. So I give them various, you'll see through the syllabus. I give them various chapters excerpted from that. Now, notice how the next section is long term historical data. This is not a heavily quantitative or statistical course, but I really encourage them to go to this link, and I encourage anyone listening tonight. Actually, ourworldindata.org is a fabulous place to go and look for all sorts of data, not just on economics, on politics, on human development and things like that. And I've created myself something called exhibits of capitalist development, taken mostly from that database with nice looking graphs and charts and things like that. I won't show them to you tonight, but when you see on the syllabus that green bracketed thing called sakai. Sakai is just the name of the online service at Duke where the students can go on and access and retrieve readings and the syllabus and exhibits and things like that. Now notice the grading course evaluation. 15% of it is them speaking up in class in the debate. So that's a fairly big chunk. They also have 15% goes to five quizzes online. So you'll see, as I show you the syllabus, after we've gone through a certain amount of material, I'll give them a quiz. It's mostly multiple choice, but it definitely makes them keep up on the readings. Now the most interesting, I think part of this is the fourth requirement. Notice what it says. Also, 15% of the grade short 300 words or so written comments per section of the syllabus. Now that's delivered online before we meet. So this encourages them to read the material before we meet. And these comments are all available to each other. They can all see each other's comments, and they're encouraged to either pick a particular reading or take a particular concept in the readings that we're about to discuss and comment on them and opine on them, and they'll say things like, I liked this reading because it made this point. Or I see that marks and keynes differ on this point and not, or I don't understand this point. I hope this can be raised in class. It's a really good way for me to, and I read these before I go into class. So it's a really good way for me to read how the students are grasping the material, what they're confused about. And it also is the basis for me. They get more prepared to talk in class because they've written down something ahead of time. The midterm exam is 20%. That actually is next week. Then they have to write a final paper in freshman seminar, in all seminars, actually at Duke, instead of a final exam notice, they do have a midterm exam. Instead of a final exam, they write a paper. And 15 to 20 pages for a freshman is a lot, depending, especially if they're a STEM student. It's very difficult. They're not used to writing long papers. It has to be about capitalism. It has to be something related to the syllabus. It can't be too off roading. And I get all sorts of fascinating essays on castle for and against, mostly following the syllabus. 15 to 20 pages. They're free to tell me ahead of time what they're thinking of. Send me an outline so I can coach them along the way. If you think about it, by now, this, by the way, has been sold out six years in a row. So six times 18 is what, more than 100? I have had more than 100 capitalism papers from Duke students in six years, and they're just fascinating. By the way, the average grade in this seminar is 90. You see the grading key there. I very rarely have had a case where the median grade is into the low b's and stuff. And there are many students, I shouldn't say many. I would say 15% to 20% are up in the a plus range. Really top notch performers. All right, let me show you the sections. Now, I have about a dozen, maybe 13. Section one, notice what it starts with, definitions and attitudes. So this one just is readings in how the heck is it defined? How the heck is capitalism defined? I go straight to the Oxford English Dictionary. The next one from Gallup. There's a poll of what Americans and professors think of capitalism. I have a router chapter on critics and defenders. That's the opening. And notice now the mix and what they sound like. Something from the case for socialism by moss, 2010, why capitalism doesn't work. And then the next one. Capitalism is working in the US. Pearlstein, can capitalism survive? Now, notice sometimes I'll just do excerpts. That's just an introduction. That's twelve pages. The last one in the opening section, a video, actually, of Ayn Rand defending capitalism. That's only about ten minutes. It's from 1961. What's the point here? We're looking for foundations, we're looking for definitions. I'll often ask them before they get into this, what is capitalism? How do you define it? Some of them will say it's an economic system. Some of them will say it's more than that. Maybe it's a social system. So anyway, at this rate, they're getting a flavor of how to define the thing we're supposed to be debating and various perspectives on it. All right, section two. I'm scrolling up. I hope you can see that. Section two, origins and development of capitalism. And again, a chapter from Rutar, historical origins. Now, in this case, I include a thing I wrote in 2018 on the etymology of capitalism, which they really like. The etymology of capitalism is the meaning of the word capital. Capitalists, capitalism. I point out to them that any ism is a system, whether it's socialism or environmentalism or anything like that. Now, you're speaking systematically about something, but this one kind of interests them. And they also know for the first time, they learn here that the word wasn't even introduced until 1850. So that's fairly recent. The origin of capitalism itself is usually dated in the early 17 hundreds, 1750. But the word itself doesn't come up until 1850. And of course, by a critic. It's by a critic of capitalism, a utopian socialist called Louis Blanc. Now, three or four basically encyclopedia entries. Now, I did this because they're more extensive in their discussion. And notice these can be pretty long. The Sombart piece is about 13 pages long, but notice also I do it in a chronological order. So Sombart, who was a socialist, by the way, has the entry on capitalism in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences in 1930, right in the precipice of the Great Depression. So Sombart is interesting because he's not really speaking about capitalism, has failed. The Great Depression has proved that it's a view of capitalism just before the 1930s depression, and the course had been robust, the roaring 20s, things were working out great. Halbrenner 1987, an excerpt on capital. He's wrote, also a socialist. These dictionaries, encyclopedia people, are just awful in the sense that they basically call up socialists when they need an entry on capitalism. They can't seem to find any capitalists, but I give it to the students anyway. And you'd be surprised. I have found that the Sombart and Hellbrunner entries are remarkably objective. They're not so nasty that they lean entirely toward dismissing capitalism. Now, the 1993 entry, if you know Robert Hesson is a well known historian of capitalism and other things economic historian, but also an objectivist. So here's the first time they get a survey of capitalism. It's only four pages, but it's very good. From the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, from Robert Hesson and then Smith. Just a capitalism entry from Wiley, more recent 2017. Now, section three was not in the original seminar. I only included this starting three years ago, and I'll tell you why I found it very interesting. At this point, I would have just jumped into the marxian critique which comes next. But as I was teaching at the first three or four years, I found a lot of interest students had in what I call the psychology or the spirit of capitalism. In other words, they might call it the social, the cultural aspects of it, not political, not economic, but rather the idea of how does it feel to be in a capitalist setting? And of course, there's lots of arguments that it's awful, that it's anxiety ridden, that it's terrible that capitalism is alienating us and all this. So all those kind of things come up. But if you look at the readings I've given them, they're all over the place. The funniest one they read is by Hamilton, called. I picked up the first name, but it's called Affluenza, a book called Affluenza, when too much is never enough. The argument here is that capitalism makes us obsessed about buying stuff and buying stuff we don't need, almost to the point of it being a sickness. And so instead of influenza affluenza, the affluence being a problem, then Mezes, though Mezes psychological resentment toward capitalism. An excerpt from anti capitalist mentality. Berger, capitalism and the disorders of modernity. Berger is interesting because he's a conservative, and we'll come to conservatism later. But Berger is basically complaining that capitalism is too fast moving, too secular, too modern. But it's not a marxist critique, it's a religious conservative critique. So it's the first time the students kind of get the idea, well, conservatives might be having a problem with capitalism now. The next one turned out to be very controversial. It's the one they talk about the most. It's from Edith Packer, who was herself an objectivist. And the essay is from 1984. The psychological requirements of a free society. This one is enormously controversial, and the students will spend half an hour arguing about it. She lays out five character traits. I won't go through them here, but five character traits that she said are kind of essential to a person feeling comfortable in a fast moving, changing capitalist society where you have to take responsibility, self responsibility. And I tell the students, you can take these five things that Packer has given us and you can flip it and say, well, if you lack these things, you're going to feel anxiety ridden under capitalism or you're going to want to pursue some other system that makes you feel more comfortable, makes you feel being taken care of, that kind of thing. The money making personality by Rand is also in there. Now notice it's personality driven. And if you remember that essay, she has Smith and Jones, two different kinds of young people and their attitude toward making money versus taking money. The Buchanan piece. Now, Buchanan is a Nobel Prize winner from 1986, an excellent economist. He passed away in 2013, but notice what his is afraid to be free dependency. As to Cedarettum, this is an excellent essay. In 2005, Buchanan, who was pro capitalist, was noticing that even though the Soviet Union had declined and even though capitalism supposedly won, people were still afraid to live under capitalism. So he himself was beginning to see that there's some kind of psychological problem here, that even if we solve the economics and politics of it, you're still going to get people resisting being in a capitalist setting. So that's a fascinating essay. The next one is by Tara Smith, also an objectivist. Money can buy happiness. That one includes a lot of things about friendship that the students really love. This essay has a lot of personal stuff in it, which is nice. It's also a long essay. There's about 13 pages, but this one by Smith, the students really like a lot. Now, the last one, sandal, is Harvard, a real critic of capitalism. He thinks that capitalism contaminates everything. So it ends with, obviously, capitalism is terrible capitalism, how markets crowd out our morals. It ends that section. So I hope you appreciate what that section is one of my favorites to teach. And again, it wasn't part of the seminar at all until about three years ago. Notice then they get a quiz. I tell what the quiz is on sections one, two and three. So that's a lot of material to get in a quiz. Next. Now, the setup of the next four go like this. The marxian critique. And then the critique of the marxian critique. And then if you. I'm pulling up further, the keynesian critique. Critique of the keynesian critique. So, see, the way I put this together was instead of having the first half of the seminar all pro capitalism, I have the seminar toggling back and forth, not only within sections, but between sections, that you get a pro and con as you're going. I think this is much more effective than if we did it another way. Now, I'm going to go a little faster here because I want to get through all these sections. So I won't read through every reading. But you can see that section four. It's the marxian critique, obviously, the marxian critique of capitalism. And the first thing I think you should notice is mostly. I mostly go to Marx. I go to the horse's mouth. I don't want too many summaries or secondary sources of Marx. We get Marx 12345 times right between 1835 and 1875. And I try to pick those that most pertain to capitalism, not the arcane economic stuff he does. And so this one about the first one, by the way, reflections of a young man on choice of a profession. Almost nobody reads that. But it is a remarkable account of Marx telling young students that they should not pursue their self interest in career choice, that they should do what their parents say and what society wants of them. So it's a perfect setup for the Marx you're going to get later in politics and economics, where he's a collectivist and a socialist. They do read the communist manifesto. That's the third reading. The 1865 reading is about how capital exploits labor. The 1875 piece is interesting because it's going to be a set up for Ein Rand, critiquing this. So the 1875 piece is the famous one from the Gota program. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. That's the marxist principle of distribution that leads to a lot of debate among the students. The Wilson piece is interesting because he eventually became president. That's Woodrow Wilson on socialism and democracy. But it's 1887 Wilson, when he was still teaching, I think, at Amherst. Then he went on to Princeton. That socialism essay is remarkable because he basically says nice things about socialism. So it finishes with Dwarkin and then rutard. Now, if you go to the next one, it's the critique of the marxian critique. So I always tell students that they're coupled this way. If you don't come out of this with a real understanding of what Marx is, you never will. So first you get the marxist argument, but then you get a critique of the marxian argument. And so you're coming at it from two different angles, and you begin to learn whether the critics of Marx are treating him well or they're. Whether they're setting up straw men or steel men, whether they're getting to the point or not. The other thing I ask the students to look at is, are these largely economic arguments or political arguments or moral arguments? So the critique, bombardic, Mises, Hayek, Rand, fare Thompson, Brad Thompson at the end, why Marxism? Now? By 2012, we have this long track record of what the communist regimes have done. That is a bare knuckle, absolute decimation of Marxism, but from a philosophical, political standpoint as well. The first one, bombardic, is him taking apart the labor theory of value. The Mises essay is saying socialism doesn't create anything, it's just destroyer. The Hayek one's interesting because he says, why do the worst type of people get to the top when you have socialism and collectivism? That one the students really like. The next one of Hayek is a suggestion that Nazism has something to do with socialism. And that's news to most of them. Most of them do not know that Nazism is a contraction of national socialism. Now, notice the rand piece. It's from Atlas Shrugged. It's from the 20th century motor company story. And if you remember, she's specifically mocking from each according to his ability principle. So that matches up perfectly with what we got from Marx the previous week when he was advocating that. I've had whole essays written by students on the marxist approach and Rand's critique, an entire paper just on that. Okay, another quiz. Now we go to Keynes, the keynesian critique. Notice this is also chronological. Marx is the 19th century, Keynes is the 20th century. And they get a little background here. They know, I tell them who Keynes was, how influential he was, how his ideas were incorporated into american textbooks, college textbooks, through Paul Samuelson 14 editions between 1948 and 1991. So they get a sense of how important this is. Now also notice all the Keynes readings. Again, straight Keynes first reading not so many interpretations of Keynes, but Keynes himself, and mostly chronologically, starting in 1925 with his essay on Russia, where he lauds Russia, he applauds shockingly what Russia is doing, that they're exterminating the motive to make money. And this is a very interesting experiment, he thinks, and it really sets the students up for thinking, wow, this guy is not what they call the savior of capitalism, but he's really nasty and anti capitalist. That also shows up in the end of la se fair. The 1926 essay Barnes in 1928 starts connecting Keynes to fascism, which is news to people, let alone to students. And we talk about that a little bit. So more on Keynes, and then an excerpt from Croti, who is a marxist professor who's issued this book recently, saying Keynes is against capitalism. This is a very good book because it's countering the argument that Keynes came in to save capitalism. At this point, the students are starting to realize, hey, I've heard something about Keynes before. They may not have read marks, but either in Econ 101 or in social sciences classes in high school, they heard something about Keynes, and they know that he's dominant in current economics or to a large degree, the critique of the keynesian critique. Notice, Ruf Mises, this is starting post war 1940. 719 48. Rand. I have the meaning of money from the money motive speech from Atlas. That's Francisco. The reason I do that is Keynes has a lot of critiques of what he calls the money motive. He literally calls it the money motive, this idea of greed and how it makes capitalism crash and burn. So again, counterposing Randier against Keynes on the meaning of money. And money is not the root of all evil, but the root of good is very powerful. This is the one I taught today. So I just finished teaching this section today. Scousen refers to the decline of keynesian economics and the rise of supply side economics in the under Reagan. Brian Simpson is an objectivist out in San Diego, and he talks about why there would be renewed popularity of Keynes's ideas even after they've been discredited. So that's a good one. And then I include my own essay on why say's law is a counter to keynesian economics. So they get a little economics in their say's law. Again, a quiz. The quiz will come Friday. Next week, they'll have a midterm exam and then spring recess. Now, three in a row, all arguments for capitalism, but of varying degrees of success. So section eight, conservatism. Again, I won't read through all these, but the usual suspects. Friedman, Hayek. Now, I put Rand in there, but rand is critiquing conservatism. So the Rand essay is conservatism and obituary. Then Crystal, then Gilder, then Kirk and Opitz. They're all conservatives who are pro capitalism, but they're know. Look at Kirk, Crystal. Only two cheers for capitalism, not three cheers. Gilder, the moral sources of capitalism. Gilder's trying to say capitalism is based on altruism and faith, not rationality, egoism and reason. So the students here get the idea. Well, these people are trying to defend capitalism, but they're very uncertain about it, and for the reasons you can imagine in this group, that it's secular and it's egoistic and it's individualistic, and a lot of conservatives and christians don't like that. Next, libertarianism. Boaz, Rothbard, Nozik, Nagel, chartier. Now, here I picked ones that particularly had essays about capitalism, what they thought of capitalism. So notice Rothbard, capitalism versus stateism. Nagel the Nozick one is very interesting from 98. Nozick, by the way, was a Harvard political philosopher, a libertarian. Why do intellectuals oppose capitalism? Chardier and others? The essence of the libertarianism one is that many of them lean toward anarchy and believe that all states are necessarily misbehaving. So the students get this idea of, wow, there seems to be an argument for capitalism which says it only works when there's no state. And many of them are very suspicious of that argument. But many of them are surprised as well that the libertarians aren't for and some of them are constitutionally limited government, or they just have this non aggression principle. They don't have any deeper philosophy underlying it. And that's what Nagel argues. If you look 1975, Nagel, libertarianism without foundations. That critique was very powerful. Nagel basically said libertarians are just saying be pro liberty, but they have no ethical, epistemological, other foundations. Okay, and then objectivism. Rand Peacock, Kelly there you are, David, objectivism and entry in the Encyclopedia of libertarianism. And then Tara Smith, some excerpts from her book on moral rights and political freedom. Now notice there's just excerpts from capitalism, neon non ideal, but there are a lot of them. There's chapters one through nine and then 16 and 18. And they also have to read man's rights and the nature of government. Now notice the peacock one from objectivism. The philosophy of iron ran is just chapter eleven, so they don't get the full context of what's in opar. That would take too long. But that's a very good chapter, and it's a long one, too. That chapter is about, what, 34 pages or so? So it's just the chapter on capitalism in Peacock. Sometimes the reaction to this one is, well, isn't objectivism just like libertarianism? Why are we reading objectivism? It sounds a lot like libertarianism. And what I do for these three is I basically say in the name, I hadn't remembered in the name. Conservatism is trying to conserve something, but it doesn't have the idea in its name. What is it actually conserving? Maybe it's only conserving the advances made by the other side over the last 50 years, in which case it's a moving target, libertarianism. I tell them liberty is in the name. So they're more ideologically branded, if you will, than the conservative is. But they're also emphasizing liberty with a cacophony of different underlying tributaries. When I get to objectivism, I say it does have a capitalist argument, but the root of it is objectivity. So here I bring back the idea that it's well named, that its specific brand is objectivity, but objectivity and the purpose of the seminar for defending capitalism. So that's helpful to them. Okay, the last, filling this out now, section eleven is religion. This is another section I did not have in the first three or four years. It came up so often among students, I assume, mostly because they were either religious or conservative, and they're very interested in whether religion is generally pro capitalism or not. Now, in this particular case, I felt the need to try the three main religions. So these aren't essays just about Christianity or, say, catholicism and religion. If you notice, it has Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. So the last one is titled, is Islam compatible with capitalism? It also has the famous argument from Max Weber that the protestant work ethic is central to capitalism. That's obviously religion and capitalism. Mueller's essay is very good thinking about the Jews and capitalism. I have an essay in there called Holy Scripture and the welfare state from my book. That chapter shows that many of the dicta and many of the principles in the Bible support the welfare state. And to the extent the welfare state is not capitalist, there's a kind of tension there. For someone saying capitalism is held up by religion. Environmentalism comes next. Sometimes the students are surprised to have this categorized as anti capitalist. But we talk about that. We talk about the readings. These readings, if you'll notice, are a mix of pro and con. Capitalism and ecology by foster is definitely capitalism sucks. Klein this changes everything. Capitalism versus the climate. That is capitalism sucks. But Epstein, Alex Epstein, an objectivist, and Schellenberger and Salzman. I have the eight stages are pro and Schwartz. Peter Schwartz, the philosophy of privation. You see that it's roughly half of those are environmentalism is anti capitalist, and the other one's capitalism is against the environment. And notice the last one, very telling, kill capitalism before it kills us. By the way, when I first put this together, and sometimes the students react this, when I first put this together and submitted it to the curriculum committee, someone jokingly wrote back and said, what do you mean for? There's capitalism for and against? And they jokingly said, what do you mean for? We're not used to teaching anything for. But the challenge in this syllabus was to put in as much for and as much against as possible, ending with feminism, racism and ethnicity. Now this has become somewhat of a grab bag. I'm not entirely happy with this, but it ends with that. Is there a feminist argument against capitalism? Yes, most feminists tend to be against capitalism. The question is, why is capitalism good for women? What about women and children? So all those kind of things. Is capitalism racist or does it expunge racism? Does it care only about the color of money? What is the relationship between the southern, agrarian, feudal south in America and the northern, industrial, more capitalist north? That's a very controversial stuff. The Cud essay from 2015 is very good. Cud was, I think, at BC, she still might be. Anne, cud, is capitalism good for women? That essay is unbelievably good. So if you want to look that one up, that's a good one. Schwartz is here again for gender tribalism. Rand is in here talking about women's liberation. Rand is in here also on racism. So this one, I do confess to being leaning in the direction of more arguments that capitalism is good on all these issues. And Reeseman is in there as well. He's an economist. Kendi, who is very popular now, is, obviously thinks capitalism is inherently racist. So it actually ends with Kendi on the negative side. And that first one from Fuchs is capitalism is terrible for all sorts of things, all three of them, actually. Feminism, racism, and ethnicity. Then there's a student paper. And that's it. Now, I wanted to just show you one more thing, and then I'll open it up to questions all throughout this. I'm going to switch here, and I hope you can see that. Can you see that? I just switched? [00:40:02] Speaker A: Scott, it's small text. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Let me try to make it bigger, see if I can make it bigger. Is that bigger? Kind of. [00:40:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:16] Speaker B: Okay. This taxonomy, I call it. Notice how it's set up. It's got four columns. And when they first get this, it's a blank. This is when this course is done. But in the beginning, they get it blank. Now, notice what the columns say. What is capitalism? Then the next one. Is it practical? Then the next one. Is it moral? Then the third one, is it sustainable? And on the left, you have the course sections. We went through socialism, keynesianism, conservatism, libertarianism, objectivism, environment. You get the idea. What's missing in the religion? One's missing. They're asked to fill in the answers to these questions as they go, and one thing builds on another, and they're supposed to. And this is a fairly limited wording. You can't go on and on about it. You have to get to the essentials. And I'm trying to get them to think in terms of the relationship between these. Put it this way, if you look under objectivism, it basically says capital. I'm wording it now, I'm just abbreviating it. Capitalism is sustainable because it's moral, but in objectivism, it's moral because it's egoistic. And then it would be practical and that's why it's sustainable. But also her definition, it's a system of liberty, a social system, not just an economic system. Now, what would you guess the socialist marxist argument would be? Capitalism is not sustainable. Right? It's going to face a revolution from the workers. Keynesianism will say something like, well, capitalism tends to go into a ditch every once in a while because of recessions and financial crises. But if you implement keynesian prescriptions, it might survive. If you go down to environmentalism, it'll say it won't survive because it's eating up the planet or burning up the planet. So I've just found that this. And of course you have to have a definition. Look at the marxist definition. Capitalism, a private property system where the few capitalists and owners exploit the many laborers and non owners. That is obviously a very different definition than Iran would give. But I have found this is very helpful because it helps them organize their thoughts about these seven or eight different groups and what they're answering on these questions. And the fact that the questions are interrelated, that the morality, practicality and sustainability of a system, they're going to be interrelated depending on their views. The other thing this matrix does for them is it helps them write a paper. I tell them to use the matrix and I'll say, for example, you could write a paper going vertically comparing what capitalism is defined as by the pro capitalists versus the anti capitalists. In other words, are they biasing their discussion by their definitions? Another way to do it would be go horizontally. Just take, say, Keynes and say, okay, I'm going to write a paper on whether Keynes thinks it's moral or practical and whether that has anything to do with his view of whether it's sustainable or, and of course you see what I mean? So you can go vertically or horizontally. That's not the only way to do it. And it immediately becomes clear to them that there are a number of possible final papers in here based on what we've reviewed. So it's a kind of a busy exhibit, but they're doing it gradually. This is not thrown at them all at once. Every section that's finished, they have to submit their little descriptions of what they think the critique or the support is saying on these four columns. So that's a lot. And I'll stop, I don't know if I should stop screen sharing, Scott, so we don't look at this. I'll stop the sharing, if that's okay, and we can discuss and take questions. I went way longer than I should have, probably 40 minutes or so, but we have at least 45 minutes. That's it. And any comments or questions or things. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Just raise your hand. I've got a few. I mean, that sounds like an amazing amount of reading and just work and the length of the paper. Are some kids dropping it before the ad drop? [00:44:44] Speaker B: Well, the answer to that is yes, but it still ends up being full. So some come in and some go out. But, yes, I would say if you get 20 show up after a couple of weeks, two or three might drop, but then two or three come in. So, yes, that is probably a filter. The other thing that happens is even the ones that stay, they'll get worried as they go into it about whether they can keep up or not. And in that regard, I spend some time with the ones who are most worried, talking about studying skills and reading for comprehension. And quickly. It's not really a course in that, but sometimes really smart students will come in and they're so smart, they kind of have lazy study habits or reading habits, or they might be meaning, you know, science, technology, engineering, math. So they're not used to reading large quantities of material. But that's how I handle it. Scott. I summarize things pretty well in the seminar. I point to parts where they really should be focused. And the key thing is I shockingly tell them, you realize you do not have to read every sentence of every assignment. And they say you don't. And then they'll say, well, okay, which one should I not read? But that's their obligation to kind of figure that out, to be able to take, say, a 20 page essay and get the essence of it either by notetaking or some other means. But, yes, it's a lot of reading. [00:46:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great that there's so much interest in it. Let's go to Mitchell. I've got some other questions about capitalism as well, but. Go ahead, Mitchell. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's good to see you, doc. It's great to see you again. This is a former Duke student, if we can admit that. Mitchell, good to see you again. Yes, good to see you again, too. Yeah, I just reached out to Dr. Solzman today because I'm actually visiting Duke next week, so hopefully I'll get to see him in person. Yeah, we'll. My question is not that I'm just a little upset that you didn't teach this class when I was there. My question is, why wasn't it taught? Because it seems like a lot of the readings, and it seems like you've shifted the syllabus quite a bit. A lot of the readings that I remember, some of them are definitely in there, but definitely like a lot more mises in here, a lot more straight to the source type of stuff, a lot more Aynrand, a lot more Keynes, some Rothbard even, which I know I don't really think you touched when I was there. So I'm curious, why the shift? Well, remind me, Mitchell, whether the courses you took with the other courses I taught, the PP, E gateway and introduction to political economy, or did you take this seminar? I took the intro to political economy, the capstone and the distributive. What you. That explains what you just asked, because those had some of these readings in it. You're absolutely right. But the reason these are know, Marx, Keynes, Mises Hayek, Rand, Rothbard. Is this is the seminar just on capitalism. So, yes, you didn't take this seminar, but the readings I have here, the lineup, it is not substantially different from when I started in 2019. So I teach it every spring. And so I think you're just comparing two different syllabuses. So it's not like I changed the syllabuses from the other ones. It's just that this one, capitalism, foreign against, only for freshmen, only for first year students, is heavily. All these names. That hasn't changed much. That might be also. Why. Because was it always taught only for freshmen? Yes. Okay. So I never had the opportunity to take it then. Right. I think you and I met maybe your second year or the end of year. 2016. Yes, 2016, my freshman year. Yeah. Great. [00:48:46] Speaker A: Richard, I wanted to ask, you said at the beginning about capitalism being durable. I just want to push back a little on that. Is that really the record of. [00:48:59] Speaker B: Mean? Well, I use the word durable because it's kind of a stand in for sustainable, but I didn't want to use the word sustainable because that would be biasing the matrix they're supposed to fill out. But the other reason I use it is they learn through the readings, especially from the critics, the socialists, who will say, man, when is this thing going to die? We keep predicting its demise. We keep predicting its end. We hope that every new crisis is a reason to expect it to follow. And yet it takes a licking and keeps on ticking, as they used to say about what was the Timex watch? And the fact that the Soviet Union fell, that the cold war was over. Again, it's not like the world embraced capitalism morally, but that if you look at the readings, that has an indelible mark on the critics as much as the fans, again on the idea, well, socialism is not durable. It either kills or impoverishes people or just collapses. And so that's the main reason I use the word durable. And I'm also kind of trying to make the argument of what you don't want to study something that's ephemeral. There's no sense studying something that's only going to be around a while. But it does say 300 years. I mean, 300 years is a long time. Now you and I and others in the room here will say, well, do we really have pure capitalism anymore? It seems like that has not endured. And that's certainly a debatable point, too. But that's the main reason I use the word durable. [00:50:34] Speaker A: That's fair. [00:50:37] Speaker B: And notice also the very first sentence says social system, and most of them think of it as an economic system only. So that's me very upfront kind of hinting that there's more to capitalism than just the economics and politics of it, that they're going to get something about the psychology of it and the cultural aspects of it and other things to it. Much closer to the broader objectivist definition of the system. Is a social system a broader concept for encompassing all political, economic, cultural, and psychological. Great. [00:51:13] Speaker A: We have Atlas Society founder David Kelly with his hand raised. [00:51:19] Speaker D: David? [00:51:20] Speaker E: Yeah, thanks, Scott. Richard, when I saw at the beginning of your presentation that feminism was listed as one of the know lines of criticism of capitalism, I was saying that seems de minimis. I mean, it's kind of a small thing, but when you got to that point in your syllabus, I realized it was more identity politics as such, which includes feminism, but also all kinds of. [00:51:50] Speaker B: Other things, racism and ethnicity. Yes, it is kind of a catch all for, well, these particular groups are harmed by capitalism, blacks or women. So they hate it, right? Yeah, go ahead. [00:52:05] Speaker E: There's an entire cultural explanation. [00:52:13] Speaker B: In terms. [00:52:14] Speaker E: Of assumptions, collectivism, the victim psychology, victim mentality, and so forth. [00:52:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:23] Speaker E: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that. But I also wanted to ask you a much more general question. I was a teacher in a previous life, and in some ways I'm still a teacher. My experience has been people in academia who have a job and are expected both to teach and to write, to produce research and to teach their classes. And I was talking with a friend of mine just today about many people seem to have one or the other is their primary goal. And some people love writing and teaching as a means to getting ideas for writing. Some people love teaching, and ideas are just ways of sharpening their acts to be a better teacher. You strike me as someone who does both, but I was really struck by, as you went through your syllabus about all the care you take working out something for your students, just more of a comment. But if you could comment on what drives you to create these wonderful Silvai. [00:53:49] Speaker B: That's a good question. I think actually, in terms of my interest and being at a research institution, the emphasis is on not only research, although primarily research and publishing and secondarily teaching. I do enjoy both. And I know I feel that way because if I'm doing too much teaching, I feel a little bit uncomfortable that I'm away from my research and I'm not finishing that paper I want to finish. But then also when, you know, lonely, you know how lonely it can be. David, writing, you're in a little bubble and everything, and then I want to get out and talk to people and teach students and everything. So I do go back and forth, and they're like mutually reinforcing. I have heard not only that, I have a lot of reading and maybe too much, so I'm always conscious of cutting back if I can. My weakness is I'll find some great new essay and I'll want to add it and I don't delete something else. So I do keep track of the page numbers per week to make sure they're not in excess of some number, but it could be cut back a lot. But I think the other thing is, every time I put the syllabus together and tweak it or change it a little bit, it's structuring my own knowledge in a very helpful way. It's structuring my own, and I learn more and more when I'm teaching it. But yes, some of it is to make it more digestible by the students, I think. I'm conscious of the fact that there's a lot of pages, so the more I give them a structure that makes logical sense and they can hang it, and they all interrelate, that the sheer volume doesn't overwhelm them, it's easier for them to see the structure of it. So if this was the same number of pages, but organized kind of haphazardly. It would be really taxing on them. So I think that's the other thing I do. I think the reason I have this level of detail and structure is I'm kind of conscious of the fact of not wanting to overwhelm them. [00:55:43] Speaker E: Yeah. Well, thanks. And I'll just say I wish I'd had you as a teacher. [00:55:50] Speaker B: Thank you, Dave. I think my main challenge is to shrink it a little bit. This needs to be cut probably 10%, maybe 15%. Yeah. [00:56:07] Speaker A: Great. Well, next, I recognize the name from some of the top articles from our site. Will Thomas. Good to see you. [00:56:15] Speaker C: Good to see you, Scott. [00:56:16] Speaker B: Good to see you, Richard. Great to see you. [00:56:19] Speaker C: Good to see you. Kate, too. I noticed that you make, usually in your syllabus, in each of the sections, there's like a pro part and a con part critique. But I did notice in the objectivism section there wasn't. And I wondered whether it was just hard to find a decent critique or you felt that it's obvious that so many different cultural forces are against objectivism, that it's obvious it has critiques. I don't know, but can you comment on that? [00:56:58] Speaker B: Well, I hadn't thought of that. I'm glad you mentioned that, because you're right. In the conservatism and libertarianism section, there's pros and cons, but not. You're right. It's not in objectivism. I have to think about that. You think it would be strengthened by that? I'm trying to think of a representative one or two. Here we are adding to the syllabus again. But, yeah. What would you say is the best source, a libertarian critique or a conservative one? Because I know you could get both. I don't know if a marxist one would work. They tend not to engage at that level. The critiques I've noticed are mostly from libertarians and conservatives. Yeah. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but I'm going to think about this now because that's a really good question. [00:57:52] Speaker E: Just look for reviews of the Atlas Shrug movie, and anti rand people are coming out of the woodwork. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:04] Speaker C: Will Wilkerson wrote an essay why I'm not an objectivist. [00:58:08] Speaker B: Oh, okay. I'm going to write this down. [00:58:09] Speaker C: I believe. [00:58:10] Speaker B: Okay. [00:58:12] Speaker C: 15 years old, but he was certainly trained in objectivism. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Okay. [00:58:17] Speaker C: I think his arguments are just that there are deeper issues that aren't dealt with by objectivism. So it's a fairly respectable critique. [00:58:27] Speaker B: Okay, good. And I suppose I could include the David, you know, the review of Atlas in the National Review by. That's just. That's just a trashing of the book. It would be better to have a treatment of the entire. As much of the philosophy as possible, not just a particular book. [00:58:51] Speaker E: There are many things I can put in my head. Do it. I will. More than I do about this. [00:58:57] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Will. I think it's a really good point. [00:59:00] Speaker C: If I could just offer one. Just question about materials you're using. I noticed you're using a system where your students can comment. Are you familiar with the app perusal? [00:59:11] Speaker B: No. Okay. [00:59:13] Speaker C: Because it allows you to post readings and then the students can comment on it and it rather auto grades. Of course, you can review all the auto grading those comments. Not quite the format you're using, where they're writing something a little more substantive, but it's like P-E-R-U-S-A-L-U-S-A-L. Yeah. [00:59:37] Speaker B: Okay. Perusal. Yeah, that's good to know. Great. [00:59:43] Speaker C: Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that. [00:59:45] Speaker B: Okay, good. [00:59:47] Speaker C: Might be handy for you. [00:59:49] Speaker A: I know you have a question in the chat. I don't know if you're going to ask that or something else. [00:59:58] Speaker F: No one in the chat. I'll leave in the chat just to see if there's a possibility of getting access to that syllabus or an older one. I guess I wanted to begin with a comment and really just thank you. I worked for the University of Michigan and for the medical school. I was just at one of their pretty much mandatory dei trainings. No, but it began with a Saturday live skit about a bunch of couples socially out to dinner, avoiding hard conversations about race. [01:00:27] Speaker B: I've seen that skit. That's very funny. [01:00:29] Speaker F: Yeah, it was a funny skit, but I raised the point. A bunch of medical school faculty, it seemed to be lost in them. I just want to really thank you for what you did. I raised the point. This is a skit about people in a social situation. After dinner, if I'm out with a bunch of friends in rural liberals are all, conservatives are all. We can all share the same point of view. That's fine. At dinner, we don't have to make every argument, argument on every point of view. But for our students, we owe them something like your syllabus. We owe them very different viewpoints. And I just want to really thank you for bringing that many different viewpoints. Bringing ibram, Kendi and ran to the same syllabus. That's very rare, and that's incredible. And for the students to wrestle with it. And I felt like my point was just absolutely lost when I tried to make that argument. This is not a social setting. This is not just share your politics with your friends who might all think alike. This is what school is about. And I was wondering, you made the one comment when you shared your syllabus that you shared with some other faculty member who said, well, why would you have a four part of capitals and shouldn't all just be against that earlier on. How hard is that to get such so many different viewpoints into one? It's really impressive, and I thank you for how strongly considerate it is, echoing what David said earlier. [01:01:45] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Josh, and I'm glad to share the syllabus. We'll arrange it through Scott and others. The syllabus is, the kind of procedure these days is there are syllabus banks, companies, universities have these banks, and many of them are on the sites of the professors themselves. So I don't know that people don't see them publicly. They do. I'll tell you something that, a couple of reactions to what you just said. My experience is actually that because it's roughly half and half the students coming in are not largely pro capitalist. If they are, they're maybe conservatives. There may be a handful of libertarians, very few objectivists. So actually, the way it feels to them, this will sound weird because you just saw the syllabus. To them, it seems too pro capitalist because they happen. [01:02:39] Speaker F: Wow. [01:02:43] Speaker B: The reactions I get, it sounds like they're saying it's too pro capitalist, but I think that's because they come in with so few pro capitalist perspectives that they've ever read. So it's kind of a shocker to some of them. Now, I have to tell you also that sometimes I will try in the very beginning. I don't want to really be colored by what they say and be biased, but I'll ask them why they're taking the seminar. I won't ask them whether they lean in a direction or not, but I'll just ask them what they're interested in the seminar so I can get some feedback. And it ranges from I'm anti capitalist and I haven't heard any good arguments for it, so I would just want to check those out. Two, I'm lean toward capitalism, but I'm kind of suspicious because it's irreligious. And I'm just curious whether the marxist arguments are why they persist or why they're formidable or something like that. I've had people say I'm from China, and I've never heard a case from capitalism. There's asian oriental students who take it, and many from China speak perfectly fluent English and they will literally say, I've never heard a case for capitalism. So I had to take this. I wanted to take this. I would say two thirds of them are completely neutral in the sense of they have no idea. And those are probably the more interesting ones. They come in and they literally will say, I don't know. I think it's an important topic, but I don't know. I don't lean in one direction or another. [01:04:19] Speaker A: Can you talk a little bit about the debate discussion aspect? Does it get heated? Has it changed over time? [01:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. The dynamics of the 18, it matters who shows up. Like one year, about three years ago, six out of the 18 were libertarians and they just dominated the discussion and almost intimidated the other ones into not daring to come out for socialism or anti capitalism. So some of it is managerial in the sense that I have to make sure that all voices get heard. But that's rare. It's usually this mix that I just described. Now the other thing that happens is in the first couple of weeks they talk to me, which is really not ideal. In other words, we're in a circle, right? And when the students want to say something, they'll address it to me. And what I'm trying to get them to do is address it to each other to start talking and arguing with each other. And that happens about the third, 4th week into it with some maneuvering and suggestions on my part. Someone will say something and they'll saying it to me and I'll say, does anyone want to respond to what John just said? Or anyone? Does anyone disagree with what John just then they start talking to each other and that dynamic gets very good. Or the other thing is those commentaries they have to write ahead of time online before they go in. I encourage them to start reading each other's comments because I read them all as a professor. But I say to them, after you write your comments, you might want to poke around and see what the other students said in their comments. And then finally, the dynamic that really develops at the end, like in the last third of the seminar, which is very fun, is the students start and they're very much attuned to this more than I am. The students start categorizing each. You know, if Sally leans left and Joe leans right toward capitalism, Sally and know soon learn that. And they'll sometimes pitch their arguments toward each other for that reason. And then, of course, the rest of the seminar learns that. But I try to get them away from the idea of. I try to get them on the idea of. Read the ideas and see whether you agree with them or not. Don't do performative things, trying to outrivel or best their colleagues. And they're mostly pretty good about that. The thing that's hardest for freshmen to do is to be text based. So you see these readings and they really have to be trained to come in in a seminar as much as possible. It's very difficult to do. And when they're commenting, say things like, mises points out on page 52 that the psychology of capitalism is this. That is something. As you know, David, a senior would be much better at, or a graduate student would be much better at, whereas the freshmen aren't. They'll read the material, but they haven't been trained yet, and they're not good at making their comments in relationship to the text and the material. They'll often just use it as a springboard to start talking about other things. And sometimes you can't tell whether that's because they're just not rigorous in their reading and commenting or whether it's because they didn't read the material. [01:07:36] Speaker A: Great, David, you have your hand raised. [01:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:41] Speaker E: I just wanted to make another pedagogical point, Richard. I think the idea of getting students to talk directly to each other rather than to you as the God in the room is hugely important. It took me a long time to realize that when I was teaching. But when they talk to each other, if they're talking to you, it's like talking to their parent. You're in a different level altogether. That's not real. They're going to graduate and go out into the real world. They have to actually talk to other people who are their equals, the peers, sometimes their bosses. [01:08:23] Speaker B: Right. [01:08:24] Speaker E: I used to tell people, don't write for me. [01:08:27] Speaker B: Right. [01:08:28] Speaker E: Write for your reader because you graduate. If you ever write something again, it's not going to be a friendly teacher, a parental teacher who cares about you. It's going to be a hard boss or your peers. [01:08:45] Speaker B: Right. [01:08:46] Speaker E: I just think that's a psychological point, but I just wanted to make it because it's so important pedagogically. [01:08:59] Speaker B: Yeah. The other thing I've heard repeatedly having to do with self censorship, shyness, feeling intimidated every time I ask the students whether they feel free to speak on campus or in seminars or in class and in seminars, it's much more intimate. First of all, you don't speak up much in lectures anyway. So you're in a seminar and you're required to speak up. And every time I ask them whether they feel more or less comfortable in front of professors versus other students, they always say other students, which surprises me. Going into academia 13 years ago, I thought I had this impression that what students were afraid of is teachers, professors expounding a view that the professor didn't agree with. And it could go either way. The marxist student might be worried as much as the capitalist. And of course, there's this issue of authority and they're grading you. But actually, most students tell me if they self censor and bite their lip, it's because they're worried that other students will ostracize them. [01:10:06] Speaker E: Oh, my God. [01:10:07] Speaker B: Yes. And that's very weird. It's very unfortunate. And then here I am in a seminar and trying to encourage them to speak up and not worry about that. Right. In this particular seminar I'm doing now, there is a socialist, marxist leaning student, and she's very bright and she's very articulate, and some of the others are just, like, back on their heels and they're not quite sure what to say. But she's very good, and that's a very helpful thing to have all sides articulate, if they can be good. [01:10:45] Speaker E: Thanks. [01:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:48] Speaker A: So what role do you play when you have someone like that know, Spitfire for the other. [01:10:57] Speaker B: Doing it? And it's a long two and a half hours when I'm doing the, oh, by the way, I use the David, you know, the Liberty fund method of holding a queue of a line of people. It's a very structured talk in the sense of the topic will come up. Sometimes I'll ask the student what particular reading they want to discuss. So I don't mandate that they talk about Mezas versus Hayek versus whatever. So someone will launch in, and then what I'll say to them is, if you want to make a comment on the person who just commented or on this topic, just raise your hand and I'll keep a queue. I'll keep a lineup on a pad of paper. And that makes everything much more orderly. So they're not interrupting as much at all. They're not interrupting each other. They know they're going to get their turn when it comes. If in the interim, five minutes or so, somebody else made the point that they were going to make, all they have to do is say, I'll pass. So it allows for a much more efficient handling of the questions they're not all talking over each other or someone feeling like they're not being heard. Students, of course, will develop a reputation for making. Some students will make short, pithy points and others will monologue for a long time, and you'll get the eye rolling and things like that. So I have to manage that a little bit. But generally, Scott, what I do is if I feel on a particular topic, if I feel like the thing is moving entirely to anti capitalist stuff and I'm not seeing hands up on the other side, I will inject pro capitalist stuff. And then if I say the thing moving toward, wow, these are all like pro capitalist comments and everything's hunky dory. And this system is wonderful, I'll just dive in and say, well, why can't the minimum wage be? And you'll laugh. If you saw me doing this, you'd laugh because you know who I am. And I start making socialist arguments or anti capitalist arguments just to get the thing. It's almost like a keel balance of power. Like a kind of a keel, yeah. And I say, wow, we're listening to the port side. I need to move this a little bit this way. And the good thing about that is the students hear me. Half the time I'm saying pro capitalist stuff, and half the time I'm saying anti capitalist stuff. Well, not quite half the time, but you see the idea, I'm trying to counterbalance if it's going in that direction for too long a time, like 20 minutes or so. One of the great discussions we had today was someone brought up the minimum wage. We were talking about Keynes, we were talking about mass unemployment. And a couple of times I'll throw something up on the board, but it's not really a lecture. So I'll show them supply demand curves and realize that the wage rate is too high. And that's why there's unemployment. So for 20 minutes, they all went off on the minimum wage. Should we have a minimum wage? Should it be based on a living wage or not? Should it be $15 an hour? And at one point I said, what do you mean 15? Why can't it be $50 an hour? And they're all like stopping their tracks. I said, why not 100 if we're going to be totally humane about this and caring about the worker? And, wow, that's too high. And it's caused really high unemployment. But once you go down that route, we're just haggling over what the number will be. But you've already agreed to intervene in this contract and force people to pay a price. So isn't that the real tipping point? Those kind of discussions are really fun. Or today, when I said, I've done this before, how would you expect them to answer? I'll say, you realize if you tell an employer that he has to pay $15 an hour and the worker is only worth five, that they're just not going to get hired. And the students nod, and they're like, yes. And I said, so why don't you just make them hire the worker? Why don't you just make the employer force them to hire the worker so they'll actually get the wage? And they all stop, and none of them will say yes. And I ask them, why. I said, if you're willing to dictate the rate, why can't you go the next step and dictate that they actually hire the person? They're almost always in the middle of the road. They'll almost always say, well, that goes a bit too far. But see, they've already accepted the principle that government should force this price, but they're not willing to add to the authoritarianism of it, if you will, by the fact that the employee is not going to get hired at all. [01:15:19] Speaker A: I have a question related to that, but I do want to give Alexander a chance to get in here. Thanks for joining us. You'll have to unmute yourself. [01:15:30] Speaker B: Very good. [01:15:30] Speaker G: Yes, I apologize. [01:15:33] Speaker B: It is Alexander. I rushed to get in. I was a little late. Okay. [01:15:39] Speaker A: I'm rather young. [01:15:43] Speaker B: Thank you. I'm rather young. I'm 26, but I was introduced ain Rand, in a slight way, and I came across the website, and I'm very interested to learn more about this stuff. My main question was, if I were to attempt to learn about this, would. [01:16:08] Speaker A: You suggest going through your reading list. [01:16:11] Speaker B: That you had for your students from the start to the end? Or should I read Atlas Shrugged and some of Aynran's works beforehand to really just get a good grasp on? Like, how should I really pursue it? I think if you're interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy and ideas, the second route is much better. The first thing is whether you like fiction more or less than nonfiction. Unfortunately, she has both. I tended to start with the nonfiction, so I read the virtue of selfishness and then capitalism, the unknown ideal first. So the first one is on ethics. That was written in, I think, 64. Capitalism, the unknown ideal was written in 66. Those are very good books for nonfiction, at least starting with. But if you're more interested in the fiction, I would start with a fountainhead she's got three or four main nonfiction, excuse me, fiction, and atlas is the longest. The fountainhead is in the middle, and another one, we, the living, is a bit shorter. But the fountainhead, I would recommend starting with that. The syllabus I showed tonight, that would be for an intensive study of capitalism, mainly only capitalism from the procon standpoint. And as you can see, some of the essays and some of the readings are the objectivist Ayn Rand perspective on capitalism. But no, in terms of learning her view of capitalism, I wouldn't go through it this way in this syllabus. I'd go directly to her works, those three or four works. David, do you have a different. I want to defer to David here for different recommendation there. [01:17:52] Speaker E: No, I would recommend, if fiction is your preferred media, I would agree on the head. I would add anthem. That is a very short kind of in the dystopian genre, but it's very short and very evocative, and it sounds all the major themes. But the fountainhead is the most developed in personal terms, I would just add, for reading nonfiction, the Atlas society has a pocket guide on what is objectivism. That would be a useful introduction and conveys all the main theories, and. [01:18:48] Speaker B: It. [01:18:49] Speaker E: Will kind of point you toward the things you're most interested in. [01:18:52] Speaker B: There is also a, also, the Atlas Society has done a pocket guide to capitalism. So there's at least seven or eight different pocket guides. Easy to read, brief, succinct. And as David said, there's one on objectivism broadly, but there's also one that I wrote on capitalism, so very affordable. I think it's 495 or less. Those are distributed. Scott knows this. Those are distributed, those pocket guides at usually student conferences, students for Liberty or Young Americans for Liberty, or various other conferences, when Atlas society has a sponsors a table at these student conferences, those pocket guides are very popular. [01:19:37] Speaker A: And if you email me, [email protected] being under 30, we can probably get you at least one or two anyway. But, Richard, with the time we have, isn't the critique of Mark's section itself a sign of his influence? [01:19:57] Speaker B: You mean, am I signaling that he still matters? [01:20:01] Speaker A: Well, I mean that just objectively that he. [01:20:07] Speaker B: Think so. I think so. The idea of the rise of, say, or the interest that young people have, it's inexplicable to me. But in people like Bernie Sanders or AOC or others who are definitively in a democrat socialist part of the spectrum, that socialism still has appeal. One of the things I show them, by the way, the exhibits I show up front. Remember I mentioned one of them was a poll. One of the thing that's really grabbed them is I have three or four polls just from the last five or six years showing that young students prefer socialism to capitalism. So, I mean, that alone is a headshaker. And then when you put age, not income level, but also that it differs that older people lean more toward favoring capitalism over socialism. But here are younger people looking at these polls, and of course, they can decide for themselves whether they lean one way or another. But those are reasons I give to say, well, this is obviously worth studying socialism. And although Marxism is revolutionary socialism, I do give them a little bit in between these readings on what's called evolutionary socialism, which was really something the Brits came up with, the Fabian socialists, George Bernard Shaw and others, including Keynes, by the way. So their view was, we don't want to overthrow capitalism. We just want people to vote for it. And of course, Britain did nationalize a whole bunch of things after the. That. Those are various ways I get the students to realize that they should be reading Marx. Now, the other thing is, I teach them a little bit briefly about cultural marxism. Now, this is more current. So once they learn that Marx's view was capital and labor are at each other's throats, and it's a zero sum game, I say, well, cultural Marxism. Marxism is not dead, because now cultural Marxism has women and men at each other's throat, blacks and whites at each other's throat, this generation versus the next, environmentalism at each other's throats. So the pitch here is to understand the marxist critique of capitalism, even though it sounds like very old stuff. 1840, 818, 75, that it has current day credence and meaning, if only in another context. But even the democratic socialism thing themselves, they realize, well, there's something wrong with socialism, so we need to sanitize it with a vote. None of them are willing to sign on to the brutal, the Soviet experimental. They'll call it not socialism, not real socialism, but they feel somehow that it's okay if it's democratic socialism, if we've all consented to this awful system. They, for some reason, never sign on to democratic fascism, but they're perfectly okay with democratic socialism. [01:23:12] Speaker A: Great, Robert. Fed your hand up. Thanks. Unmute yourself. John, as well. [01:23:25] Speaker B: There's Robert. Robert. Paul. Yeah. Hi, Rob. [01:23:29] Speaker G: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that minimum wage things. Yeah, I've actually thought about that. Thought of experiment, like, oh, yeah, let's say you make it like, $100 an hour, right? [01:23:38] Speaker B: Right. [01:23:38] Speaker G: I think what would happen is people who make minimum wage currently, they would probably just work less hours, right. Instead of 40 hours, you just work 20. [01:23:46] Speaker F: Right. [01:23:47] Speaker G: And I was thinking that actually could become a reality in our world if people would just buy less stuff, right? Like if people were not eating at restaurants all the time, buy all this stuff. It's kind of like the safe law thing. The supply is demand, right? So it's really like the reason why these minimum wage have to work all the time, right. Is simply because we're buying so much stuff, right. So I think really if you're on the against side of capitalism, I think a lot of them are kind of hypocritical, right? They're also can be very consumerist, like go out to eat all the time, buy all sorts of stuff. I think that's interesting you touch on your classic, I mean, today when it. [01:24:24] Speaker B: Came up, Rob, the left leaning students who were arguing for not only the minimum wage, but higher minimum wage, I asked them at one point, now here would be me pushing back, right? Because one of the conservatives said there should be no minimum wage. And then the left leaning students were just appalled by this. So I asked the left leaning students, what if there was no minimum wage mandate at all? It was just about what would happen to wages. And the left leaning students said they would basically go to zero. They think the only reason wages are what they are is because the government's dictating a minimum wage. I would ask them, I said, so what do you think wages are based on? Is it based on possibly the productivity of the worker and whether they're valuable to the employer or not? They just don't think that way. Or they would say there should be a living wage. And I said, well, doesn't that mean that's based on your cost of living and how many kids you have and what your lifestyle is? Why should the employer care about that? The employer cares about you showing up at work nine to five, what you do outside your work hours, how costly your living standards are. Why should that be of concern to the employer? So that gets them thinking a little bit. [01:25:36] Speaker G: I think it's still 725 right now. I think it's that people actually make that law. I mean, most things that I've seen that stores are like, oh, we're hiring like twelve. I've never seen anyone advertise like, oh, we'll pay you like $8 an hour. And I feel like it's pretty rare, right? [01:25:50] Speaker B: But the states themselves, half the states this year, raised their. So there's state level minimum wages as well. And if they're above the federal rate, which most of them are, you are mandated to pay that. So, like in Seattle or something, it's 15 or $18. [01:26:07] Speaker G: I think that's about right. [01:26:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, you reminded me of something else also, because one of the fascinating things, you know this, Rob, because you know what's in the manifesto, the communist manifesto, right in the middle of it, even though it's a document calling for revolution, remember, it ends with, workers of the world, unite and basically take over the capitalists and expropriate the expropriators. That's the language. So it's a very violent message. But right in the middle of the communist manifesto is the ten famous planks. And I say to the students, now, look at these planks. One of them says there should be a central bank. One of them says there should be a graduated income tax. One of them says the government should take over the schools and be public schools. Now, when you think about that, those are reforms. They're bad reforms, but they're reforms of the capitalist system. They're not an overthrow of the capitalist system. And the other thing the students realize is, oh, my gosh. Seven or eight of the planks have already been adopted under the welfare state. So that's another. Somebody asked whether they ask about, why are we studying Marx? They see right in the manifesto that it had the influence not only of causing things like the Soviet Union and Mao's red China, but of enormously influencing the welfare state. Because we've adopted most countries, Britain and elsewhere, the social welfare states have adopted seven out of the eight planks. And that is an eye opener to most students. They do not realize where those ideas came from. [01:27:35] Speaker A: I wanted to make sure to get to John. He had his hand raised manually. [01:27:41] Speaker B: Go ahead. [01:27:42] Speaker D: John, can you hear me? [01:27:43] Speaker B: Okay? I can. John? Yes. Oh, good. [01:27:45] Speaker D: Okay. Good evening, everybody. Professor Salzman, I appreciate it. This is a terrific discussion. I love your syllabus. [01:27:54] Speaker B: Good. [01:27:56] Speaker D: I'm actually a retired economist. I taught at UNC Chapel Hill there. [01:28:00] Speaker B: Oh, you're kidding. That's eight minutes away from me. [01:28:04] Speaker D: I know it is. [01:28:07] Speaker B: When did you teach, John? [01:28:09] Speaker D: Well, I left there about 2012. [01:28:13] Speaker B: Okay. [01:28:13] Speaker D: And I actually talked to Mike Munger. Is he still the chair? [01:28:20] Speaker B: He definitely is. And his office is right next to mine. [01:28:23] Speaker D: Oh, great. [01:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:24] Speaker D: I'd actually talked to him several years ago, a little bit after 2012, about teaching a course on the moral and economic defense of capitalism. [01:28:34] Speaker B: Right. [01:28:34] Speaker D: And so that everybody understood where I was coming. You knew what I was. [01:28:42] Speaker B: Okay. [01:28:42] Speaker D: But anyway, I have a question for you. But when I taught my honors class at UNC, I would incorporate kind of an addendum of reading the communist manifesto and also in conjunction with Frederick Basquiat. Yes, the law, because they're about the same size, they're published about the same. [01:29:06] Speaker B: Time. [01:29:09] Speaker D: And a lot of these honor students had already read the communist manifesto, but they hadn't read the law. And anyway, I went over those planks, also those ten last planks, the conservatives, we've adopted those already, right? For the most part. Anyway. That was fascinating, but I just wondered if you were able to incorporate. You've talked about minimum wage and wage termination and all that. If you were able to incorporate some of the great principles in economics in that even the law of one price with wage termination, when I explain it in non economic jargon, wages tend to equal what you contribute to the final product. [01:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:59] Speaker D: And then the question is, is that fair, what you contribute? [01:30:05] Speaker B: The answer to this question is most of that kind of more technical economic stuff. Price theory, law of one price. The profit rate is left to my introduction to political economy. So I teach separately. I teach a course called introduction to political economy. It's not a seminar. It's me up on stage with powerpoints and graphs and stuff to 75 to 100 students. This particular seminar, I don't think they could take that. First of all, I don't want the thing to be just about economics because I'm trying to suggest to them that capitalism is economics and politics and philosophy and psychology. But also, they're freshmen and they haven't even named a major yet, which is kind of interesting. The majors that they select a major second semester of sophomore year. So they're still like a year and a half away from that. So I understand what you're saying, John. It's good material. That kind of stuff is definitely part of economics, but it's not in this seminar for those reasons. [01:30:59] Speaker D: No, I understand that. And I'm not trying to criticize. I just wondered about that because you can definitely defend some of the economics in terms of capitalism. [01:31:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:14] Speaker D: Really enjoyed it, guys. Appreciate it. [01:31:16] Speaker A: Thanks. [01:31:17] Speaker B: You're welcome. Jump. [01:31:18] Speaker A: Yeah, Richard, thanks so much for doing know. It was great. Thanks to everyone who participated. These conversations are always know. We're very grateful to have him, as well as our senior scholars here at the Atlas Society, several of whom are here. If you're looking for other ways to get involved with our work, please check out the Atlas Society events. If you'd like to be involved in making sure we can continue to do all that we do at the Atlas Society. Please consider giving a tax deductible donation atlassociety.org donate thanks everyone. We'll see you next time.