0:02 All right.
0:07 Now, what's amazing about Marx is that
0:10 today we say he's wrong, right? Communism
0:12 Communism
0:13 happened in the Soviet Union. It
0:15 happened in China, but it happened in
0:19 Europe and in United States where Mark
0:21 said it would happen first because
0:23 Germany was more industrialized than
0:25 Russia or China. Okay, does that make
0:28 sense? That's that's that's what we say.
0:32 If you think about it deeply, okay, um
0:33 um
0:35 Marx is right.
0:39 After World War II, every society, every
0:42 industrial society to some extent adopted
0:44 adopted
0:46 the ideals of communism.
0:48 It doesn't make sense. Okay, we call
0:51 this socialism and not communism, but
0:55 basically it adhere to the thinking of
0:57 Marx, which is to make the worker the
1:00 heart and center of your society. And
1:02 and why did they do that after World War II?
1:04 II?
1:07 Exactly. Okay. Because workers create value.
1:13 Money doesn't create any value. Money
1:14 just creates more money. Okay. It's
1:17 speculative. But the workers create
1:19 value. They're productive. And
1:20 therefore, you have to treat your
1:23 workers properly. So in America and in
1:26 Europe, workers became the heart and
1:31 center of your society. And the workers
1:35 through unions could uh demand political
1:38 reforms. And so our society was geared
1:41 towards making the lives of the middle
1:43 class, the working class better. Okay?
1:46 That's why you had excellent healthcare,
1:48 great great public schools,
1:56 Okay, so the 50s and 60s and 70s was
1:59 basically the peak
2:03 uh of society for the working class.
2:06 But in the 80s,
2:10 we start to change this. Why?
2:11 Why would why would we want to change
2:13 the system? It's a great system, right?
2:16 Marx is right. Having the worker as the
2:18 heart and center of your of your
2:20 society, as the central organizing unit
2:24 of of society makes a lot more sense
2:26 than having money as the heart and
2:28 center. Okay? But starting in the 80s,
2:54 Yes. Exactly. Okay. So, what happened in
2:55 the 80s is something called the revolt
3:03 Okay. In other words, the problem with
3:06 having a society based on a worker is it
3:09 becomes too egalitarian, too equal,
3:12 right? But if you're like the elite, you
3:15 don't want equality. You want
3:19 difference. You want to have power and
3:21 money in your hands. Does that make
3:24 sense? So the revolted elite happened in
3:27 the 80s. And this is what we call in the
3:30 United States the re Reagan revolution.
3:33 Okay? The Reagan revolution,
3:34 the beginning of neoliberalism, free
3:37 market capitalism. And in Britain it was
3:39 called Thatcherism. Okay? Margaret
3:42 Thatcher. the Thatcher revolution.
3:47 And so now you need to transition away
3:50 from the worker to something else. Okay,
3:53 another ideology that allows the elite
3:58 to amass power. Okay, so just to show
4:00 you how radical this revolution was in
4:03 the 1970s, okay, 1970s, if you were a
4:06 CEO, the head of a company, okay, you
4:10 were making on average $1 million US a
4:12 year. That's pretty good, right? That's
4:14 really good money.
4:18 And that $1 million was more than 20
4:22 times the worker. Okay?
4:24 Okay?
4:26 And that's
4:28 pretty reasonable.
4:32 Today, the average CEO in United States
4:38 makes $20 million a year and that is 200
4:40 to 300 times more than the average
4:42 worker in the company. Okay, does that
4:45 make sense? So,
4:49 um in the 80s, inequality start to explode,
4:51 explode,
4:54 right? And so they're transitioning from
4:56 the worker to a new organizing unit
5:03 Okay?
5:06 So they needed to destroy the the
5:08 working class, the middle class. And the
5:10 way they did it was by introducing a new
5:13 concept called the consumer. Okay? So in
5:15 the 50s, 60s and 70s, the government
5:17 promised you a good job. If you were a
5:19 member of a society, if you were a
5:22 citizen, I promise you a good job
5:24 that you would have for the rest of your
5:27 life. Okay? So in the 80s, the
5:30 government said, I promise you that you
5:34 have low prices and a wide selection of goods.
5:36 goods.
5:38 Okay? Does that make sense?
5:43 All right. So this sounds like a subtle
5:45 shift going from the worker to the
5:48 consumer. Okay. But what this meant was
5:50 a revolution
5:54 in society, a revolution in politics. So
5:58 remember that an example of the worker,
5:59 the worker has to have political
6:02 consciousness in order to protect his or
6:05 her rights, in order to organize and and unify
6:06 unify
6:09 and uh push for favorable political
6:11 reforms. Okay, that's what the worker
6:13 must do. Okay, but now let's think about
6:16 the mentality of the consumer. And to do
6:18 this, let's do another thought
6:20 experiment. And the thought experiment
6:22 experiment is this. Everyone in the
6:25 school about 500 people.
6:30 I decide to give everyone $1 million US.
6:32 Okay? So, everyone in the school has
6:38 exactly $1 million US to spend.
6:41 What happens now?
6:42 Think about this. What happens now? Use
6:48 What happens? What's the first thing you do?
7:00 What's the first thing you do?
7:02 I've given you a million dollars. What
7:08 Well, the first thing you do is buy
7:10 something, right? What do you want to buy?
7:12 buy?
7:15 $1 million is a lot of money. What what
7:21 You buy a house, right? That's great.
7:23 That's a great purchase. Then what do
7:36 Okay. First thing is not buys a house.
7:39 Then then what does he do?
7:41 Excuse me. Buy furniture. Then what does
7:44 he do? There's something that he must do
7:46 that's very important. What what does he
7:53 He wants to take pictures and post on
7:56 social media, right? So everyone sees on
7:59 social media. Then
8:02 you see this now has this huge house in
8:05 Beijing with lots of fancy furniture.
8:08 What do you do now?
8:10 You also want to buy a house. But what
8:11 kind of house?
8:13 A bigger house, right? And then what do
8:20 You also post pictures. Okay. Then how
8:26 You you think this is funny, okay? But
8:30 this happens all the time. So very
8:39 and you Yeah. You all spend your money
8:42 and you all go into debt, right?
8:43 Because you're in competition with each
8:45 other to buy the biggest thing. And $1
8:47 million is a lot of money, but it's not
8:50 enough to buy everything, right? So, you
8:52 go into debt. You borrow more more money
8:55 to buy more things. And then what happens?
9:07 How do you guys feel about each other?
9:09 Do you guys have lunch together? Do you
9:10 guys have dinner together? Do you guys
9:17 You guys hate each other, right? At the
9:18 end of the day, what will happen is you
9:20 all go into debt and you all hate each
9:24 other, right? So that's consumerism.
9:26 This is what what consumerism is.
9:30 Consumerism creates a competition
9:34 in society for prestige, okay? to see
9:37 who can post the nicest social media
9:47 or the optimization
9:50 of you. Okay? In other words, you are
9:53 now unable
9:56 to act together. You don't want to
9:58 organize. You don't want to act in
10:00 solidarity. Okay?
10:04 And ultimately this means that
10:08 you develop economic logic. Okay? And
10:10 what is economic logic? It's to see the
10:17 world only through the lens of capital.
10:20 Okay? Does it make sense? So when you
10:22 when you see someone and you you might
10:25 like okay well do I want to date this
10:27 person? You don't ask oh is this person
10:30 a nice person? You you ask yourself how
10:32 much money does this person have? Okay,
10:35 you understand? You use economic logic
10:40 in order to understand the world and to
10:42 reason and analyze the world. Okay, now
10:44 let me ask you this question
10:47 today. Is this how China works? Is this
10:49 how the world works?
10:52 The answer is yes. Okay. Are do you are
10:54 you like this?
10:57 Yes, you are like this. Okay. You've
11:00 been brainwashed into thinking thinking
11:04 that this is the only way to behave and
11:06 to think. You're in school. Why are you
11:13 So you can get a good job. Why?
11:15 To make money and so you can buy things.
11:17 Okay, you understand? That's how you all
11:20 think. But there are different ways to
11:21 think about school, right? You're like,
11:24 I'm in school to learn, to open my mind,
11:26 to have an imagination, to think
11:28 critically about the world, right? And
11:31 that was the way we thought about school
11:33 when the workers were dominant. But now
11:35 that consumers are dominant, all we
11:37 think about is how do I get a good job?
11:40 How do I buy a bigger house? Because I
11:43 want to post it on social media. Okay.
11:44 Okay.
11:48 So, if you think about this, what this
11:53 really is is the perfection
11:59 Okay? Does it make sense?
12:00 What does this phrase mean? The
12:08 Yeah. Yeah. He becomes a slave of the
12:11 money. But but but what why is this perfect?
12:16 Yes. Okay. You understand? If you're a
12:19 slave, you rebel, right? But you don't
12:21 know you're a slave and you like this,
12:24 you choose this, then you will never
12:28 rebel. Okay. So the consumerism is the perfection
12:29 perfection
12:32 of slavery. Okay?
12:34 Okay?
12:37 And that's why Francis Fukoyama thinks
12:41 that consumerism is the end of history
12:44 because it is a system
12:47 that achieves what the elites want and
12:49 the masses
12:53 are unwilling and unable to protest and
12:55 rebel. Okay, does that make sense? It's
