Is Capitalism Evil? - Sunday Fireside Chat

Life Audio. Hey there, this is Marissa Streit. I am the CEO of PragerU, and you are about to listen to a special edition of Fireside Chat with Dennis Prager. Those of us here at PragerU are continuing to do the very important work that we've been doing with him for over 10 years. We are educating millions of young people online. We have state partnerships to bring our content into schools and so much more. You can head over to prageru.com to see the progress that we've been making. Also, I'd love to invite you to support our mission by donating to our 501. It is a nonprofit. Your tax-deductible donation will go to an institution of higher learning that actually shares your values. So enjoy your podcast, and thank you so much for all your support.

Hi everybody. Hello everybody. Hello. Hello y'all. Now I worked out today. And took a nap, so I am Mr. Ready to Go. Okay, you are. So this is actually being videoed right now, but it won't be included. This, folks, is what we call an outtake. Are you ready, Otto? I do this every time before the session. Are you ready, Otto? Yes, he is so ready. Hi everybody, let's use that outtake. What the hell? Good to be with you. Welcome to my home. My dog Otto, needless to say. My fireplace, my books. Do you know this, this room is surrounded by books? I think I mentioned this once. But, uh, I— to say that I don't expect you to remember everything I say is to understate the case. I don't remember everything I say either. So, uh, there is something special for me when I enter a home and I see bookshelves with books in them. Even if you don't read them, it's a statement that you take ideas seriously. That you take wisdom seriously. So it's just something to think about. Get, get some books, get some bookshelves. It's a statement. It's a statement to you just as much as it is to others. Do you know what people say whenever they come over to the house? They come into this room. Now I have 4,000 other books aside from the 1,000 in this room. I just don't have the room, unfortunately, in my home. To store them. So they're stored elsewhere. And every one of them was handpicked over the course of my lifetime. Buying a book was a thrill in my life, and I wish it were a thrill in more people's lives. But anyway, and of course I didn't read them all. I fully acknowledge that. I basically use them for writing my own books and my own articles to do research with them if I had to look something up. But of course I read a fair number, but nothing close to all of them. But it's a beautiful thing to see in a home, and it's a loss. That's why, that's why people love this background, among other things, is the books and, and the animals from all over the world. That's, that's a, that's a, it's a nice collection. Oh, Otto! He's fun, and he's very non-neurotic. A lot of neurotic dogs— the basset hound we have is somewhat neurotic, but he, he's placid. All right, so, uh, Megan, the inimitable, the one and only, which is the same as inimitable, Megan McDonald, the producer, director, and dictator of this fireside chat. You know, is that— I'm offended. You're offended. I know that. That's great. She's offended. So I'm going to have a visit with human rights, human relations. I mean, human rights. It's hilarious. With human relations at our PragerU. But I will defend myself.

You are the—

Oh, I am Prager. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We're all, we all bow down to HR. Anyway, I've never been there, by the way, just for the record. Okay, so she gave me a sheet of paper with some— what are these, tweets? Yeah, look like tweets. Yeah, that some folks in their 20s, I presume, have tweeted out on the subject of capitalism. So I'd like to read them to you and then respond to them. Because we're living in a morally backwards and ignorant age. So here's one from a guy. Capitalism began in England around the 16th century. I think it's a little early, but it's irrelevant when it began. They immediately went on to colonize half the planet in search of new markets. Committed multiple genocides, traded slaves, and engaged in constant war. In school, we learn about how communism is evil because of a famine. So the, the original reason for exploration was not new markets, It was gold. People were looking for gold. People were looking for spices. People were looking for anything that they could, that they wanted, that they might not have in Europe. The Europeans were the best in the world, and they were not the only ones. Muslims explored places. I'm well aware of that. That's part of the reason Islam extends as far as China. There were a lot of Muslim sailors. But there was a desire to acquire riches, which is universal. There is no culture that has ever produced people who did not want to acquire riches. There might well be primitive cultures, but even that I don't believe. I was in Papua New Guinea twice. The first time I was in Papua New Guinea, I went out into the bush. Where people walked around literally only wearing leaves. It was what we would call quite primitive. I don't use primitive in a bad sense. There could be nice people and bad people in primitive society, as nice people and bad people in modern society. But it was primitive. And I went to visit a tribe on the island of New Guinea. And I noticed that some of the men were wearing a necklace of pig tusks. When I inquired as to why through an interpreter, I was told that the— this was the way in which a man could show he was wealthy, by the number of pig tusks on on his necklace. So even in primitive society, there was a desire to acquire wealth. That was the number of pigs, or the number symbolized by pig tusks, meant you were wealthy. And why did they wear it? It attracted women, just as it does in modern society, where wealthy men attract more women than poor men do. These are such basic ideas about life, I feel silly wasting your time telling it to you. But since the basic ideas of life are no longer taught, people make up things based on what they would like life to be like. Oh no, women are not attracted to wealth. Oh no, men are not attracted to beauty. That, that's a denial of the realities of life. So this notion capitalism sort of created this desire to get wealthy or to have markets. Wherever there was an idea of trade, people had markets. What else does he write? Let's see. Colonize half the planet. I don't know if the Europeans colonized half the planet, but they colonized plenty of it. Maybe half. And while I am no fan of colonialism, you have to ask, compared to prior to colonialism, What was the society like? I'll give you an example of India. India is so big that it's really called a subcontinent. It's really a continent unto itself. India was— consisted, and still does, of a vast number of languages, groups that speak completely different languages from another: Hindi and Tamil and a whole host of other languages. The British colonized India. And one of the things that they gave India was a common language. That is why you could have India that would actually develop. You cannot have a society develop where no one can talk to each other. Right? That's the— even if you went to college, that should not be an obscure principle. And I say that as a joke, but it's not a joke, because people are not taught to think clearly in college. A very big problem. Anyway, so they gave the Indians a united language. That is why Indians at this time can talk to each other from North India to South India and East to West. What do they talk to each other in? Overwhelmingly, English. Here's another thing that the British gave them. The British, this is a famous story of one of the British governors general of India who learned that there was a practice called sati. Sati was the practice wherein a widow would jump into her husband's funeral pyre when his body was cremated, she would jump into the fire and be burned to death. This was what widows did quite commonly, and it was known, as I said, as sati. So he decided to ban it in India, and some Indians said to him, well, this is our practice. And he said, okay, And it is the English practice to hang people who practice sati. That was his response. And that pretty much ended sati in India. If you care about truth, if you care about morality, then you have to judge things based on truth and morality. Were there bad aspects to colonialism? There certainly were. Were there good aspects to colonialism? Well, it depends where. Some areas, what the Belgians did in the Congo was pure evil. But what the English did in India was not pure evil. A lot of good came of it. The courts of law in India that came about because of the English. The common language. The abolition of sati. The beginning of the abolition of the caste system. The caste system preceded Western capitalism and Western market searching. This is, this is ancient. This notion like the world was beautiful prior to the West's exploring it and even taking over a lot of it is just a gigantic body of ignorance. It's a horrible thing, the caste system, where people were born and could not change their caste. This— it's— class is not as good a term as caste, but that's what it implies. If you were born into the lowest caste known as untouchable, you were untouchable. You— and you did the dirtiest work in the society, and you could not marry up, and you could not earn money to go up. You could not leave it. It was fixed. Just as if you were a Brahmin, the highest caste, that was fixed. So this— don't, please don't romanticize pre-colonization worlds. There was a— the human species produces crap under all circumstances. The issue is what do you do to make people better? How do you make a better society given the raw material of human nature? That's the single most important question you could ever ask. This is the material. How do we make something good of it? And in the West, with all its flaws, which existed everywhere in the world—slavery was universal, the bad stuff of the West was universal—the good stuff of the West was unique. That's the most important thing for you to remember. The question is not why, why were there wars. You think there weren't wars before the West or capitalism? Do you think there wasn't avarice and greed before capitalism? I'll tell you what there wasn't before capitalism. There weren't a lot of people in abject There weren't a lot of people who got out of abject poverty. Capitalism is the only thing that has elevated billions of people out of poverty. Why doesn't that matter? I'll tell you why it doesn't matter to Western leftists who are already wealthy. They can't imagine abject poverty, and they're ignorant because they went to college, so they were indoctrinated, not educated. They have no idea that capitalism elevated billions Billions of people. Does that matter to you? Does that matter to the jerk who wrote this tweet? The ignoramuses who write these tweets? Who know nothing? Just nothing? They emote. They're all— it's all the— all these tweets are emoting. And then the worst part that drives me crazy: in school we learned about how communism is evil because of a famine. If that's what you learned about communism, that it was evil because of a famine, That proves my point. You learn nothing in most schools. Nothing. Worse than nothing. You get a distorted view of the world. Because of a famine? How about because 100 million people, noncombatants, civilians, were killed by communist regimes? Mao's China, Stalin's Soviet Union, just to give the two biggest ones. Pol Pot's Cambodia, if you want to go— oh, he only killed about a quarter of all Cambodians. The Khmer Rouge. You know what Khmer Rouge means? Probably not. It means the Red Cambodians. Communists. And guess where he learned his communism? At the Sorbonne in France. Yeah, they were teaching leftist garbage that long ago. The slaughter of human beings, the deprivation of all freedom. Every communist country deprived people of freedom. They were prisons. You couldn't leave. I was in communist countries. That was my field of study. I was in communist countries a lot. Do you know that in the Soviet Union, for example, if I would visit someone in an apartment, which I only did once or twice 'cause they couldn't talk freely. They assumed that whatever they would say would be monitored. Every floor in the apartment building had usually a woman sitting there writing down who visited you, who visited the Soviet Union. And if a Westerner came, they were in trouble. Why is somebody from the West coming to your apartment? So I met people in the Soviet Union, not in their apartments. I met them in parks. They told me what tree to meet them at. And then we would keep on walking. And they would talk very low. I'm gonna tell you something very sad, really, really sad. Prior to the lockdown, I never say prior to COVID, 'cause it's the lockdown that has shattered society, not COVID. Prior to the lockdown, I flew every week for the last 30 years, just about every week of the year to some, to someplace to give a lecture. So I'd be at airports a great deal. In the last few years, this was very common. People always came over to me, you know, for a selfie or just to shake my hand or whatever. But something new has taken place in the last couple of years. People would come over to me and they would whisper, "Just want you to know." I'm a conservative, or even lower than that, I support Trump. Do you know the last time people whispered to me when they were in public? When I visited communist countries. That's very sad. It's both scary and sad. People are afraid to say out loud what they think if it's against the left. That's— we have that in this country. A famine? That's all you learned about communism? There was a famine? You didn't learn the 100 million? The spectacular deprivation of human rights? The horrible economic and health conditions in communist countries? You didn't learn that? And it wasn't a famine, it was a famine every communist country. Mao killed 40 to 60 million people through famine, a deliberate famine, because he sold his food, his wheat and other food to the Soviet Union to get arms because he wanted to be a world power. So if the people starved to death, it didn't matter as long as he got the advanced armaments. That and the collectivization of the peasantry. You can't have your own little farm, your own land, your own cows. The state will own them. And they literally took away everything, their pots and pans and their animals, until 40 to 60 million starved. Read about it. Read about the deliberate famine against the Ukrainians done by Stalin. 5 to 6 million Ukrainians Starved to death. An anti-Trumper historian, Anne Applebaum, wrote The Red Famine. So you don't have to worry about it being written by someone who's conservative or who's on the right. She was an anti-Trumper with passion. But she wrote a great book on the— it's called The Red Famine— on what the Soviets did to the Ukrainians. That's all you know about communism. You know all the bad parts of capitalism because you don't value liberty. You know why you don't value liberty? 'Cause you take it for granted. 'Cause you're in a free country. Another tweet here. Yes. I'll give you one more. I don't have a, says a young woman. I don't know if she's a young one. I assume. It's a woman, but I don't know, young. I don't have a dream job. I have a dream community role. I don't want to work for profit in a world where that's the priority. I want to work because I love the people around me. That's my dream, not labor under capitalism. It sure is a dream. You want to work because you love the people around you. So if you don't love the people around you, you'll quit your job? Who loves everybody around them? What kind of make-believe world do you live in? People love a handful of people in their lives. They, they love their family, hopefully. Not everybody loves their family. And they love their friends. You are going to work in a place where you love the people around you? Ooh, well, that's a dream. Anyway, let's say you do work with people you love. I, in some ways, do love the people at my radio station. A lot of wonderful people there. I do work for a profit, and they work for a profit. And why is it wrong to work for a profit? How are you gonna feed your family if you don't work for a profit? Profit is your salary. So I make a living, and then I feed a family. Isn't that a beautiful ideal? What would you rather have? You do your dream work and the government feeds your family? That's what communism is. You will, you will write poetry Marx wrote under some tree and the government will take care of your family. No, I want to take care of my family. That's why I've worked for a profit and because I enjoy buying books. And I enjoy, I enjoy so many things of life. And it has spurred me to work hard. That's a wonderful thing. Make— this is all make-believe world like John Lennon's Imagine. The make-believe worlds, the world, the make-believe world of utopia always produces hell. Always. Every utopian movement has produced hell on earth. Okay guys, let's see what this week's question is. All right, here we go. Take it away. Ashley Canata, 19, from Los Angeles, California.

Oftentimes I'm blocked on social media by people with liberal viewpoints. How can I have meaningful discussions with people who are liberal instead of them just being instantly offended by my beliefs and refusing to interact with me?

Well, let's see here. Oftentimes I am blocked on social media by people with liberal views. Liberals never block people's views. Leftists do. It's a very important distinction. I share the same liberal values I had growing up when I considered myself a liberal. I wish we had— I wish people with liberal views dominated. People with leftist views dominate, and the left has always since its inception 100 years ago, depending on when you call its inception. I use the Russian Revolution. It— wherever it has been in power, the university, the Soviet Union, doesn't matter where, Cuba, always without exception, the left suppresses other views. Liberals do not. The trouble with liberals is they they vote for leftists. But the fact is liberals do welcome other views. Leftists suppress them. How can I have meaningful discussions with people who are liberal? You mean left? Instead of them just being instantly offended by my beliefs and refusing to interact with me? There is no way. They refuse to interact with you, not because they're offended. That's the language they use. But because they have no answer. I have invited leftists to debate me. I have offered $10,000 to $20,000 to New York Times columnists to publicly debate me or any of my colleagues that I would pick. Doesn't have to be me. Of course, there's no response. They never debate. They smear. That's the way it works. That's why there's a whole vocabulary of smears. I gave it an acronym years ago, SIXHERB. Sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted, and there are more. Hater, I mean, it's just endless. I just read an attack on PragerU in a left-wing website, Salon. All they did is smear right-wing propaganda, right-wing propaganda doesn't tell the truth. They didn't give one example. I'll debate a person at Salon about PragerU. How's that? And pay you money. I'll pay you money to debate me. It's a public invitation. Wisely, they never do. Never. Because leftism is rooted in hateful emotion. In immaturity, in feelings, not in data. Jessica, 28, Arizona. Hello, Dennis Prager, you staff. Otto, Jessica in Arizona says hello. I have a quick question regarding relationships, which is this: do you believe in love at first sight, or is that— or that it's more gradual? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you so much, and I love everything you guys do. Thank you. So you will find this rather interesting, and I am very open about my life, so here goes. I always thought love at first sight was only in movies. That was, I said it publicly, 'cause I've talked a lot about male-female relations in my lifetime. One of the hours of my radio show for about 15 years is the Male-Female Hour every Wednesday, the second hour of my show. So I have a lot of experience in this, and I never believed in it. Uh-oh. Then life intruded. I met my wife, and it was love at first sight. And I was shocked. Just shocked. Being a public figure, I've met many, many women in my lifetime, more than the average man would meet. As any public figure might. And, you know, I was, you know, found, you know, oodles of women attractive. That's just the fact of male life. But love? No, I assumed, as you wrote, that's something that develops over time. So I know for a fact that it exists, but I would not, rely on it as the deciding factor on whether you will love somebody or marry somebody. The vast majority of people develop love, and it isn't love at first sight. But you're— I'm answering you literally. Do I believe it exists? Yes. Do I think you should pursue it? No. If it happens, it happens. And by the way, you may have love at first sight, and it may be deceptive. It might be lust at first sight. Might not be love at first sight. It might be chemistry at first sight, but not, not real love. And that's why it exists, but I wouldn't rely on it. Stevens 58, St. Louis Park— that I believe is Minnesota, if I'm not mistaken. Why are you a fan of fountain pens? You've asked a great question. I heard on your last— wait, then there's a part 2. Why do I love it? I am lucky. I love so many things, not to mention so many people, that it's one of the secrets to my happiness. The more things you love, the more things you enjoy, the happier you will be. And I have a nature I take no credit for. My nature is I love a lot of things: classical music, cigars, fountain pens, photography equipment, a music system. Uh, it's, it's a pretty long list. And yet, why do I love fountain pens? If you write with one, you will fall in love with it. When you see the ink coming out of the top called the nib. What's the matter, Mr. O? We didn't pay him enough for today's session? That is a rare moment, ladies and gentlemen, for me to be doing this without Otto at my side. Otto! I guess he wants to see Mom. Is he going out the door?

All the talk of her, he missed her.

Oh, is that it? I mentioned her and he misses her. All right, I hope nobody's tuning in in the middle. Otto was here. That's a first, isn't it? He has never gotten up and left the room. He has?

He has, rarely, so rarely.

But it's very rare. I don't remember it, but I believe you. Anyway, if you write with a fountain pen and the ink comes out and it's so much smoother writing and so much deeper color and any color in the world because you get any ink colors come in hundreds of colors. It's just fun and they're beautiful and I love beautiful things. So I've loved it since high school when I started. He continues, I heard on your last fireside chat that you do not like fruitcake. I enjoy a good quality fruitcake. If somebody sent me one, I would eat it. Some of the cheap ones turn people off because they have too many raisins. You can never have too many raisins. That's just the rule. Ecclesiastes 6:3, you can never have too many raisins. I made that up. It is not in the Bible. And bitter citrus peel. All right, so here's the truth. I was taking a cheap shot at fruitcake. Because my employer has been giving me the same fruitcake every Christmas for 20 years. I believe that 20 years ago— it's the same tin as 20 years ago. I believe they bought thousands 20 years ago for a great price and just have stored it in some storage unit and give it to we, to us who work for my radio syndicator. So I'm really ribbing them, and the truth is it's not one of the world's tastiest cakes. However, all things considered, I agree with you, it can be yummy. What is our time frame? 30. That was great. That was, that was great. Oh, look at this. I got a young kid from Brisbane, Australia. Got somebody from Las Vegas. I love these questions. Hamburg, Germany. Dhaka, Bangladesh. It's a wonderful thought that people all over the world are watching this. You know why? Because what I have to say applies to human nature, and human nature is the same in Bangladesh as in New Orleans. So everything you hear is applicable to anybody, and that's important to me. Okay. Always wonderful to be with you. I'm Dennis Prager, and I'll see you next week.

Tomorrow on Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.

I'm a college professor, and I'm writing a book about why we shouldn't get rid of Shakespeare, and I wanted to know what your favorite Shakespeare play is and why.

I saw your call, so I've been thinking about it and thinking about it. First of all, I hope you get— Do you have a publisher?

Uh, not yet, just working on that.

I really, I really hope you get one. It's a very important book to write because he was a giant and his understanding of the human condition is astonishing. It is just astonishing.

But, uh, the idea of getting rid of— sorry, sorry.

No, no, I just, I'll just answer you. All things being considered, in other words, if, if somebody were to say, hey, you can have tickets to any of his plays Which would it be? I don't think you would expect this, but it would be—

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