Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
Today I would like to present to you a view of capitalism that is a bit unusual.
And would require some mental somersaulting, some mental rearrangement of the furniture.
That's always useful to rearrange the furniture.
You find forgotten hidden treasures, you see things differently, and you can start from scratch.
So I think it's where capitalism is.
But before I go there, I will share with you a quote.
"If rich people with private property have been stuffed through excessive greed, and if they want in their contents too obstinately, they give rise to countless and incurable illnesses.
And through their vices, these rich people can bring about the ruin of the body as a whole." This was not written 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, and it was not written by Thomas Piketty.
And it was not written by any other Marxist critic of capitalism.
And it was not written by any economist, or by any scholar.
This quote was written in 1159 by John of Salisbury in his famous book, "Polishradios".
This means that people have been aware of the problematic inherent in capitalism a thousand years ago.
That's one thousand years ago.
We have been living with this problematic one thousand years, and we have not been able to solve it as the recent economic crisis has shown, 2007, 2010.
Something is seriously wrong.
Something is seriously sick, and we have been failing for at least ten centuries to cope with it.
Today I will try to share my point of view as to what is wrong, but even I will not presume to propose any recipes or prescriptions as to how to fix what's wrong.
Capitalism is based on individualism.
Now this sounds like a trite, banal observation.
Yes, capitalism is based on individualism.
So it means that it is against anything that humps, that obstructs mobility, and it is against anything that obstructs efficient allocation of capital.
These are the two foundations of capitalism.
Total mobility, also known as freedom for the ideologically inclined, and efficient allocation, the invisible end of the market.
But if you look at these two foundations closely, you will see that they don't go well, for example, with the institution of the family.
So family help us obstructs, prevents total mobility.
The family is against efficient allocation of capital.
Family is anti-capitalistic.
All institutions, all social institutions are anti-capitalistic.
All social practices are anti-capitalistic.
It seems that at the foundation, at the basis, we must make a choice.
Do we choose community and society, or do we choose capitalism?
Do we choose the market, the efficient frictionless market?
Or do we choose institutions that interfere with the functioning of the market?
One way or another.
By definition, every institution interferes with the operation of the market.
Regulatory institutions, judiciary, politics, family, community, friendships, all these institutions interfere with the operation of the market.
Capitalism and social institutions of all kinds are mortal enemies.
This is something we are very low, very low, we are very reluctant to admit.
So it's not done. It's not politically correct to say this.
One should never say that capitalism is against all social institutions.
It's not okay. Because we live in a capitalist society, which is essentially an ideological society.
And of course, speech is proscribed, is limited.
Political correctness is a form of limited speech.
As Herbert Macuser called it, this is the intolerant free speech.
So we are not supposed to say that, but that is the truth.
The Hanseatic League was the first experiment at mass capitalism.
It was in the 12th century. It was a group of German-based Baltic cities.
These Baltic cities coalesced, worked together, created a mini European Union.
They engaged in trade, they engaged in commerce, they engaged in making money.
And it was the first experiment in capitalism.
What was the motto? What was the slogan of the Hanseatic League?
"Stadt luch mak frei." The heir of the city makes you free.
Emphasis, free.
No state, no institutions, total freedom.
Let's say fair, as it was called later.
Capitalism is a zero-sum game. It's a zero-sum game.
And it achieves its outcomes by fostering the illusion of scarcity on the one hand, and by using inflation as a form of taxation.
I will go into it a bit later.
But it's important to understand that it is completely untrue, completely untrue, that capitalism can generate positive outcomes for all actors and agents involved in the capitalistic play.
That is not true. My game is your loss. Your loss is my game.
It's a zero-sum game.
So why do I participate? I participate because I hope to gain.
And why do I hope to gain? Because I have been brought up on the illusion of scarcity.
And if by mistake I do gain and I belong to the wrong class of people, inflation will take away my game, taxation.
It is not an accident, of course, not an accident, that as income inequality increases dramatically, inflation vanished.
Inflation is not in the interest of some classes.
We'll come to that in a bit later.
Capitalism is built, as Marx said, capitalism is built on surplus.
Capitalism is built on the fact that you engage in certain activities, like trading in the Netherlands or like agrarian agriculture in Britain until the 15th century.
These activities generate surplus. They generate goods and services that you yourself and your family cannot consume.
And then what do you do with this surplus? You trade, you exchange it with others, and they give you their surplus.
That's the foundation of capitalism. It's a surplus economy.
Over the centuries there was a question, what to do with these surpluses? What to do with these surpluses on a social level?
What can society do with these surpluses?
Because you see, individuals create surpluses, entities such as corporations create surpluses, and they trade, but a lot of these surpluses accumulate.
All you have to do is look at your local bank. Your local bank has bank deposits. Your local banks have deposits. Our surpluses, this is money that you did not use to trade. This is money that you did not use to buy a smartphone. This is money that you did not use to travel.
So you put it in a bank. These are surpluses that are unused.
What to do with these surpluses?
And over the centuries there were two answers, two solutions.
What to do with surpluses on the social level, not on the individual level?
The first answer was a social agenda. We're going to take these surpluses and we are going to redistribute them. Redistribute them.
We are going to tax the rich and give to the poor. We are going to have pension schemes. We are going to have healthcare schemes. We're going to have maternity leave. We're going to take from the rich and give to the poor the Robin Hood solution.
And this is the social agenda.
Ironically, it was invented and initiated by an extreme right-winger, not left-winger.
His name was Bismarck.
Very tough hooky.
The iron counselor.
Bismarck was the first to come with social programs, such as pension and healthcare and compulsory education.
The socialist agenda was initiated arguably by the most right-wing person after Adolf Hitler in history of Europe.
Bear this amazing fact in mind because it's relevant.
We'll come to it a bit later.
This was the first solution, the Robin Hood solution.
And there was a second solution.
And the second solution is income inequality.
Take from the poor and give to the rich.
Take from the rich and give to the poor.
Take from the poor and give to the rich.
Two solutions that are naturally proposed.
The second solution is known as income inequality.
What's the problem with income inequality?
What's wrong with it?
Why are we so exercised about it?
And is it an inevitable facet of capitalism?
Let's answer the second question first because it's much easier.
Yes, it is an inevitable facet of capitalism.
Somehow society has to deal with unused surpluses.
Either you give it to the poor or you give it to the rich.
So one of these two solutions is a capitalistic solution, inbuilt as a default mechanism into capitalism.
Another question is what's wrong with income inequality?
Here's what's wrong with income inequality.
It's not a question of morality.
It's not a question that it's not okay for me to be a thousand times richer than you.
It's very okay, I would like that.
That's not a problem.
It's not a moral problem.
It's not an ethical problem.
It's an economic problem.
Why is this an economic problem?
Because if someone becomes too rich, they don't use the money they have.
It's very simple.
If I have a million dollars, I know how to use them, believe me.
If I have ten million dollars with a little effort, I will be able to use them.
I will buy a yacht.
I will find a lover with expensive tastes.
And I will put her on the yacht.
And we will not go further, what happens.
So there are always solutions.
A hundred million dollars becomes a bit more difficult.
But a hundred million dollars I can buy stocks, I can open a factory.
What do I do when I'm wearing buffets?
And I have 89 billion dollars.
And I'm 90.
What do I do?
The money gets buried.
Buried in bank accounts, buried in stocks, buried in real estate that no one uses.
37% of all the stock of residential real estate in the world is empty.
37% of all the apartments in the world are empty.
Because they are not used as residential apartments, they are used as investment vehicles.
The money gets buried.
When you are Bill Gates, when you are Warren Buffett, when you are Stephen Jobs, the money you have cannot be used anymore.
It gets buried.
It is taken out of circulation.
Money velocity decreases, and this process is called demonetization.
Income inequality demonetizes the economy.
It leaves less and less money available to us.
Because before Warren Buffett got this a hundred billion dollars, they were available to me, and you're a new one.
But now the D-Rester, they are not available to me anymore. So that forces central banks to print money, quantitative easing and so on. Because a lot of money is taken out of circulation all the time. Rich people demonetize the economy all the time. Now you can say, wait a minute, fuck me, stop exaggerating. How many rich people there are, and how much money can they take out of the economy? Not such a big problem. I don't think you know what you're talking about if you're saying this. The 10,000 richest people in the world, 10,000, not 10 million, the 10,000 richest people in the world have as much money as 3.9 billion poorest people in the world.
I repeat, the 10,000 richest people in the world have as much money as 3.9 billion poorest people in the world.
The 100 richest people, 100, not 100, 100 richest people in the United States have as much money as all the blacks, all the Hispanics, and 5.6 million whites.
So, rich people are taking money out of the economy much faster than anyone can generate it, and leaving us all much poorer.
The state is trying to hope by offering social services, less and less under, for example, Donald Trump, by offering social services, and so what we are left with is socialism with a capitalist face.
Because capitalism is not about 100 people taking all the money out of the economy.
That's not capitalism.
That is absolutely not capitalism. That is known as oligarchy.
We are left with no capitalism.
We are left with socialism pretending to be capitalism.
Socialism with a capitalist face.
At some stage, the rich people understood how to become even richer and how to take poor people's money.
That was the biggest discovery, and it happened after the black death.
What happened is this.
Until the black death, and not available, until the black death, there was a clear structure of power.
There were feudal lords, there were vassals in everyone in each place, and everyone was happy, actually.
It was a rough period, but I'm not sure it was much rougher than the 20th century.
But it was structured. It was safe. It was predictable.
And then the black death happened, and one-third to one-half of the population of Europe died.
What happened then, peasants, workers, farmers became scarce. There were not many of them.
So the pyramid of power shifted.
Instead of aristocracy on top, workers and peasants came on top, because they could charge anything for their services.
In less than 50 years, agricultural wages tripled in Britain.
They could charge more.
And then what happened is our aristocracy was gutted, was vacuumed, was eliminated as a power. Peasants and workers became a power, but the king remained.
So this created a state of modern monarchy.
The modern monarchy was born.
And businessmen made an amazing discovery.
The state had a lot of money.
The state could be their client.
They discovered that they could make much more money working with the state than working with individuals, companies.
And this is what we call the rent economy.
Businessmen, capitalists, discovered around the 16th century the rent economy.
They discovered that if they work with the state, they make much more money than if they continue to work in the private sector.
Over the next 400 years, all the private sector, all over the world, reoriented.
It was actually the biggest revolution, the biggest unnoticed revolution in human economic history.
Over the next 400 years, between the 16th century and the end of the 20th century, all private sectors all over the world reoriented themselves toward the state.
The state became the biggest customer.
The state became the most interesting business partner.
There was a reorientation to rent-based activities rather than to profit-based activities.
There was incest.
It was an incestuous relationship between the state and capitalism.
And like every incest, it gave birth to retarded children.
And these children are with us today.
Capitalism collaborated with states and governments in order to make money for capitalists.
This was never going to work well.
This marriage was made in hell.
Why? You can say what's wrong with it.
Why was this marriage made in hell? Why can't we accept that the private sector works for the government, with the government, as partners, as suppliers? What's wrong with it?
First of all, it distorts economic thinking and power economics.
If I'm a businessman and I derive most of my income from the state, I want the state to have money.
I have an interest for the state to have money to give me.
So I will encourage inefficient allocation of economic resources.
I will encourage the state to take money from the economy to give it to me.
No wonder the state grew 17 times larger in 100 years.
The state was 3.1% in 1920 average, 3.1% of GDP.
The state in industrialized nations was 3.1% of GDP in 1920.
The state today is anywhere between 37% of GDP to 62% of GDP, depending on the country.
70 times bigger.
Why? Because the private sector and capitalists had an incentive, had an interest to push the state to become bigger, because they could take more.
Capitalism has no state ideology.
Capitalism knows how to cope with certain type of individuals, entrepreneurial individuals.
But capitalism doesn't know how to cope with collectives, doesn't know how to cope with states.
Capitalism is not Islam. Islam is a state ideology.
Capitalism is not communism. Communism is a state ideology.
Capitalism is not even feudalism. Feudalism had a state ideology.
Capitalism is a loose ideology that has no way to cope with states, collectives, and individuals who are not entrepreneurial.
The result is that capitalism was inadopted, badly adopted, to the growth of the state.
As the state grew, individual capitalists benefited, but capitalism as an ideology died.
It had no mechanisms to cope with the growth of the state.
It didn't have a response. It didn't have a biological response. It didn't have a strategy response. It was eliminated, because suddenly the jungles became savanna.
It was the wrong animal in the wrong place.
Capitalism works by punctuated equilibrium, jumps.
Sometimes you have jungle capitalism, sometimes you have new feudalism.
There are tathopic transitions between the two.
But when the state grows, when the state is too big, and listen, I don't know if you understand what I'm saying, the state in the United States, federal and state level, the state in the United States is 37% of GDP directly, and another 26% indirect.
Boeing, for example, is supposed to be a private problem, but about one-third of Boeing's income is from the state.
So if we add all this together, the state in the United States is 61% of GDP.
We are not talking about a minor player or a big minor player, the only player.
The only player is the state.
The state usurped, hijacked capitalism, destroyed it like some kind of parasite that came from inside, and nothing was left of capitalism except a shell and a myth, a story, a narrative, the American dream.
Consequently, there's a lot of anxiety.
People are very anxious.
Mental illness in the West, in industrialized nations, has shot up, as my other field, psychologists, mental illness in the West has shot up.
18%, one-eight percent of all American adults have been diagnosed with a mental illness.
One-eight. Some of them are in the White House.
Now, this anxiety, this depression, has costs and has solutions.
How do people solve the depression? How do they solve the anxiety?
Well, one solution is a personality count, personalizing politics, and the other solution is the United States.
The state will take care of it.
Let me summarize now and then continue.
There was capitalism, then capitalists saw, realized that they can make money off the state, so capitalists teamed up with states, started to work with states.
Then capitalists pushed the state to become much bigger, because the bigger the state became, the more money that it would take.
Then the state became very big and destroyed capitalism, and that created a lot of anxiety among people, because people are inadopted to survive on their own.
Capitalism provided opportunities, provided solutions, and the absence of these solutions, people became totally dependent on the state, because it was the only one.
Now, let me tell you the state.
So people adopted two solutions.
One, nanny state. The state will take care of me.
The state will give me everything I need.
If I have any problem, I go to the state.
If my issues are not solved, the government is guilty.
The nanny state.
The second solution they adopted, a personality count, or personality counts.
You can have very dangerous personality counts, like the fear of the city in Germany without a fee club, and you can have more benign personality counts, like Barack Obama or Donald Trump in the United States, but always in such times there are personality counts.
Where are we going with all this?
We are entering a phase that I call neo-fudalism.
The future, the very near future, I think you will perhaps understand why I chose this word, neo-fudalism.
Fudalism generally went out of favor.
I remember when I was a kid, when the last dinosaurs were dying.
Still we were taught at school about feudalism.
But today no one talks about feudalism.
They say it's wrong, and so on and so forth.
But neo-fudalism is something a bit different.
Capitalism is dead and cannot provide solutions anymore.
There is a private sector everywhere, but it is co-opted by the state.
The state uses bulk of its expenditures on defense and social programs.
So we have socialism with a capitalist face, based of course on a myth.
And this is a myth known in America as the American dream.
Or known in other countries as entrepreneurship, by the way.
It's another myth.
You can be an entrepreneur with Soviet problems.
So there are many stories and myths to make us the sheeple.
Sheeple, sheep people.
Make us all feel good with ourselves.
But it's okay, we fit in.
Still only one day, maybe.
Here are the outlines of the very near future.
Since capitalism is dead as a solution, has been dead for actually centuries as a solution.
And since the state has reached the point of implosion, and we're not going to it, but reached the state of implosion.
And since people have begun to adopt dysfunctional solutions, like personality counts, like non-estate, etc.
I think we are reaching a kind of convergence point.
And I think the future will look like this.
It will be highly urban future.
So, conurbations, cities will be the hub.
It will be technology based of course.
In case you don't need to be a genius, it's already happening.
It will have low social mobility.
Not high social mobility, but low social mobility.
Which of the two countries that I'm about to mention has much higher social mobility than the other?
China or the United States?
Where do you think social mobility is much higher?
To define, social mobility is when you are born, for example, to working class parents.
Then you can finish in the upper middle class, or you can finish rich.
So, social mobility.
You're born low, you're rich high.
Where do you think this happens more often?
The United States or China?
China, of course.
The United States has the lowest social mobility among all 27 industrialist countries in the world.
Repeat, counterintuitively.
The United States has the lowest social mobility among all 27 industrialist countries in the world.
In fact, if you're born poor in the United States, you will die poor.
If you're born uneducated, you will die uneducated.
If you're born lower class, you will die lower class.
And your children will be even poorer and less educated than you.
For the first time in history, the children today are less educated than the parents and make less money.
So it's becoming worse.
It's, I would say, negative social mobility and most prevalent in the United States.
Low social mobility will characterize the landscape of the future.
All of them.
Social mobility is totally collapsed in Denmark, Sweden, Germany.
It's a future.
In the future, your destiny will be your birth.
Your birth will be your destiny.
Does it sound familiar?
Of course it sounds familiar.
This was the case in Europe until the 15th century.
If you were born a farmer in Europe in the 15th century, you died as a farmer and your child became a farmer.
If you were born a cobbler, you died as a cobbler and your child may choose.
This was your destiny.
Your birth was your destiny.
And until well into the 19th century, in the United Kingdom, your birth was your destiny.
And for women, your birth was your destiny until well into the third part of the 20th century.
So we are coming back to that.
Your birth is your destiny.
Your poor, die poor, uneducated, die uneducated.
Things are going to get worse.
But the stories we are telling people, the American dream, you can do it.
Life coaches, Tony Robbins, you know, if you only put your mind to it, there's nothing you cannot do.
You can get rich. You can be an entrepreneur.
Think of the right idea and you will be multi-billionaire.
Don't you see that all these nonsensical stories came about, not by accident, together with income inequality.
They are intended to keep you sedated.
They are intended to put you under hypnosis.
They are intended to prevent what Jose Ortega and Gasset called, in the 1930s, revolt of the masses.
They are intended to prevent block literacy, mob rule.
The next thing is low inflation.
The future will have low inflation.
400 years in Europe, 400 years in Europe, and probably the rest of the world, according to Keynes at least, there was no inflation.
The price of bread, the price of bread in the 13th century and up until the 30 years war was identical.
300 years. Same price.
No inflation, low inflation is a sign that a tiny group of people control prices.
It's a sign of what we call in economics, price setting, or price setting.
Why would people aim for low inflation?
Because inflation is a weapon.
Inflation is the best known weapon, to take from the poor and to give to the rich.
So you could say, well, with income inequality, and with the wide on the poor and wide on the rich, encourage inflation.
Because the rich have reached their goal. They have already used all the credits and all the debts and all the loans, and they passed them on to the poor.
Now the rich owe nothing. The poor owe a lot of money.
Now inflation will be good for the poor, not for the rich.
I want you to understand what inflation does.
If you owe money to a bank, inflation is a gift. Simply. If you owe $100 to a bank, and there is 5% inflation, when you pay the money, you're actually paying $95, not $100.
But if you are poor, and you have a salary of $100, you're actually getting $95.
Inflation is a tax on the poor and a gift to the rich.
But only when the rich have credits. When the rich don't have credits, inflation is a punishment.
Because you have assets which are essentially financial. You want to preserve.
This is the situation today. American corporations have had the three best years in their history in terms of profits. American rich individuals have reduced their indebtedness to banks and other financial institutions almost to zero last year.
The rich don't owe money anymore.
How come? They used to owe a lot of money. What happened? What happened to all these credits? They were transferred to the poor.
These credits were transferred to the poor.
This is what we call bailouts. These are exactly the bailouts.
The bank bailouts, the state bailouts, these were transfers of credit and indebtedness to the poor.
Now the poor owe money, and the rich have financial assets.
Inflation is bad for the rich and good for the poor.
So no inflation.
Statular wages, and describing to you the future, wages hadn't grown in the United States in well over 20 years.
Now this year is the first year in 20 years that wages are great, but still in accordance with inflation.
Statular wages, xenophobia, the cause of need to fight an external enemy, to mask income inequalities, to mask economic problems.
Putin, Russia, perfect example.
Xenophobia, enemies.
Reverse globalization.
The reversal of globalization.
Globalization is good for the poor, never for the rich.
I don't know if you realize this.
If America imports cheap Chinese goods, who is benefiting?
Bill Gates.
Bill Gates can buy Chinese goods at any bloody price.
The poor benefit from cheap Chinese goods.
Globalization is a gift to the poor, and a tax on the rich.
Because if you close the economy, you can charge any price.
In a closed economy, you can set prices.
If I'm a factory owner, and I have no competition from China, I can charge you a living.
Globalization is bad for the rich, good for the poor.
So, globalization will be eliminated.
Reversed. Not eliminated.
There will be no workplace mobility.
People will become like serfs, like they used to in feudalism.
They will be trying to specific locations.
When I say this in my lectures, people tell me that I'm insane.
Today's work, people are moving everywhere.
They're traveling. There are 69 million refugees and asylum seekers.
What do I mean people will not move?
There will be no workplace mobility.
Well, have a look at the following two facts.
Countries are closing down their borders.
Netherlands, Brexit.
Countries are closing down to immigration.
That's inter-border mobility.
And inside countries, people can't move because they have debts.
They have student loans, and more importantly, they have mortgages.
Mortgages tie you to a location.
Students' loans as well, by the way, tie you to a location.
Debts of poor people, debts of the 90%, debts of the 99%.
These are the tools to tie them to a location, to not allow them to move.
Mobility will decrease dramatically.
People will be stuck in single locations for decades.
I'm not talking about tourism. I'm talking about moving.
Hereditary wealth. Wealth will be passed from generation to generation.
That's not me. That's Thomas Piketty.
Wealth will be passed from generation to generation, creating dynasties.
Political dynasties is one.
The United States is mocking North Korea. They are mocking King Jong-un, King this, King that.
They are mocking North Korea. They forget that they almost had a second Kennedy.
They had two Bushes.
And in the beginning of the 19th century, they had two others.
They forget him. And almost took him.
Dynasties are an American phenomenon, much more than North Korea.
The NY, hereditary wealth, hereditary wealth, passes from generation to generation and accumulates and gives you political power.
So politicians team up with hereditary wealth and creates dynasties.
There will be no social unrest. There will be no revolutions. There will be no protests. There will be no demonstrations. Forget the yellow vests. Yellow vests are not an indigenous protest movement. They are mostly immigrants.
There will be, of course, demonstration here and protests there, but there will not be a revolution.
And there will not be a revolution for a simple reason.
All revolutions, without exception, at least in the last 300 years, were not allowed to be a revolution because purchasing power declined or was eliminated.
French revolutions started openly because people couldn't buy bread. You remember the famous saying, "If they can't buy bread, let them eat cakes"?
The French revolution started because people could not buy bread.
Russian revolutions started when agricultural crisis collapsed in the middle of the war.
All revolutions are economic, and all of them start because people can't buy bread.
Extremely simple, only to be too sophisticated.
If you make sure your population doesn't buy bread, next thing you know, they will cut off your head with a guillotine if they are best versed.
But there's no inflation.
There's no inflation.
Flourishing powerwith a guillotine if they are best versed.
But there's no inflation.
There's no inflation.
Flourishing power will remain the same as long as there is no inflation.
Indeed, there was not a single revolution in continental Europe in the 300 years where there was no inflation.
It's a fact.
The only revolution during this period was in Britain.
There were two revolutions in Britain, and they happened because of the collapse of the minority system and the decline that becomes the process.
As long as there is no inflation, there will be no revolution.
That will help me.
The rich got it perfectly.
First of all, they tax the poor via all kinds of ways.
They take from the poor, and they make sure there's no inflation.
So their financial assets are preserved, and the poor have no incentive to revolt, to repay them.
They spend the same money by the same goods over 200 years, 20 years, 50 years, and so on.
Demonetization, I mentioned, nonproductive wealth.
Personalized politics, I mentioned.
Personality comes.
And politics will become much more important than economics.
That is a hallmark of feudalism.
In feudalism, politics was much more important than economics.
And then, starting in the French Revolution and later, economics became more important than politics.
Do you remember the American Revolution in 1776?
Do you remember how it started?
Why it started?
Do you remember taxation, taxes?
American Revolution was economic revolution.
It was all about economics.
Do you remember the October Revolution in Russia?
Everything was about economics.
But during the feudal period, economics took a back seat to politics.
Politics became much more important.
Look at Brexit.
Brexit is an utterly insane decision economically.
After, it's economics result for the United Kingdom, big part of it, especially the parts who voted for Brexit.
The parts who voted for Brexit in the United Kingdom are the biggest recipients of European 108, and yet they voted for Brexit.
Why?
Politics above economics.
Look at the United States.
Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the most anti-poor president ever.
If you close down trade with China, it's against the poor.
If you reduce the state tax, it's a gift to the rich.
If you cut Medicaid, if you cut Medicare, if you abolish Obamacare, all these policies, literally all, are anti-poor.
Who voted for Donald Trump?
Overwhelmingly.
The poor.
Politics above economics.
It's a major shift.
And finally, the future will be about debt and rent.
The poor will have many debts, and the poor will pay rent.
The rich will have capital and ownership.
And the number of the rich will shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink.
Until, ultimately, the conspiracy theory of the Illuminati will come true, because ultimately 10 people will own 90% of the world.
Today, the number is 10,000.
But 50 years ago, it was close to 10 million.
50 years ago, the 10 million rich people owned 89% of global wealth.
10 million today, 10,000.
Tomorrow, 10.
Capitalism couldn't have a lot of fair with people.
You need, in any ideology, you need the drink.
You need the flowers.
You need the roses.
You need the music.
It's exactly like a louder.
Exactly.
You need a stage of infatuation.
Look at the first comedies, the social revolutionaries, they were known.
They were in love.
Read the text.
These are love letters.
Every revolution, every, everything needs to be with infatuation, with limerence.
Capitalism doesn't have that.
It's dry.
It's cold.
It's not possible.
It's not human.
It's the invisible end of the market.
Sounds like a horror movie franchise.
It's machine-like.
Capitalism is machine-like.
It's inexorable.
Do you remember Charlie Chaplin's Modern Time?
Modern Time, do you remember the movie?
When there's a worker, he's doing this.
Finally, he finishes work.
He can't stop.
He walks in the street.
He doesn't.
Capitalism is machine-like.
Capitalism optimizes.
At the expense of people.
What did the IMF do in Greece?
Optimized.
No corruption.
No taxation.
Balanced budgets.
What's the cost?
Only for a 48,000 debt base.
Okay.
Not to mention others.
Total cost may have been something like 200,000 to 300,000 debt people.
Capitalism optimizes.
It's actuallyromatic.
Most people are not adopted for this.
Most people are not adopted for capitalism.
Capitalism is very helpful to entrepreneurial people.
Risk-takers.
Dreamers.
Visionaries.
Inventors.
But we are not like that.
99% of us are not like this.
We're not built to live in capitalism in the purest form.
Feudalism is stable.
Feudalism is familiar, fits everyone.
And it's a bit like a family.
Because you have a father figure.
Used to be the king.
Now maybe Donald Trump.
Tomorrow maybe Adolf Hitler.
There's a father figure.
There's a family.
You give up.
You give up allegiance and responsibility.
And you get back safety and protection.
The rest doesn't matter anymore.
You don't have to be rich.
You don't have to be unusual.
All you want to do is wake up in the morning without anxiety.
Safety and protection have become much more important than any economic enterprise.
And the rich know that.
As a last comment, I'm not a conspiracy theorist.
I'm not saying that the rich are sitting in some club or some cabal.
They're coordinating activity.
There is a theory, there is a sociological theory, that is called convergence theory.
Convergence theory says that if there is a group of people who do not communicate, do not communicate, but they have the same interests, they will act as though they are communicating.
So if I have the same interests like you, we don't exchange a single word, but we will act in a way that looks as though we have coordinated action.
Let's call convergence theory.
The rich don't talk to each other.
I used to be advised to many of you.
They don't talk to each other.
I mean, they pick up the phone here and there, but there's no coordinated communication.
All this nonsense about Illuminati, rich people have two interests, a much bigger state from which to take, because this has become the main economic activity, rates, and much more work for various reasons of damage.
Uncoordinated, non-communicative, all of them will act in a concerted fashion to obtain these results.
How do I know? Because they are obtaining.
The proof of the new thing is in the pudding.
I'm in the pudding. I know how it is.
So this is where we are going.
This is why, when I was invited by Dovisha to discuss capitalism, I liked science fiction and fairy tales.
So I said yes, but this is what it is.
Fairy tale.
Absolute fairy tale. Capitalism survived for about 300 years, and these 300 years were 400 years ago.
Since then, there has never been capitalism, in any way, shape, or form that is recognisable to any theorists of capitalism.
There has been no capitalism, which was connected to colonialism and imperialism.
There were many other things.
Fascism was a form of capitalism, co-co-occurringism.
There were many others, but there has never been true capitalism, except for 300 years between the Hanseatic League and Netherlands, the New York states of Netherlands.
These were the only 300 years where capitalism existed, and even then, only in Europe and only in the North, all the rest is utter, unmitigated bullshit.
Thank you.
Thank you.