YouTube Transcript:
Sowell Schools AOC on Capitalism vs Socialism || Thomas Sowell Today

capitalism is an to me is it's an
ideology of capital It puts capital the
most important thing is the
concentration of capital and it means
that we seek and prioritize profit and
the accumulation of money above all else
and we seek it at any human and
environmental cost That is what that
means And to me that ideology is not
sustainable and cannot be redeemed Let
me start with something I've said for
years People who think they can remake
the world to suit their visions usually
end up breaking it instead
Um Miss Oasiac Cortez statement is a
textbook example of that a stew of
buzzwords and moral posturing that
collapses under the weight of facts and
history She's not describing capitalism
She's caricaturing it and badly Let's
take this apart piece by piece because
there's too much ignorance here to let
it slide First she calls capitalism an
ideology of capital that prioritizes
profit above all else That's a slogan
not an analysis Capitalism isn't about
worshiping money It's about voluntary
exchange People trade goods services and
ideas because both sides benefit not
because someone's hoarding a pile of
gold Wealth isn't concentrated like some
cosmic injustice It's created Take Henry
Ford He didn't steal his fortune He
built cars millions could afford
revolutionizing transportation and
employing thousands Or look at Steve
Jobs Apple's innovations didn't
concentrate wealth They generated it
lifting living standards worldwide The
World Bank says global extreme poverty
fell from 36% in 1990 to under 10% by
2019 Over a billion people lifted up not
by socialism's promises but by market
spreading opportunity Compare that to
Venezuela Under socialist rule since
1999 GDP per capita crashed over 60% by
2020 Inflation hit 1.7 million% in 2018
And people starved while oil wealth
vanished That's not
sustainability That's collapse She says
capitalism seeks profit at any human and
environmental cost That's another myth
Greed exists in every system Socialism
just redirects it to power instead of
money Capitalists profit by meeting
demands not destroying lives The US went
from 94% extreme poverty in 1800 to 1%
today because markets drove innovation
electricity medicine sanitation not
because of government edicts Socialist
regimes the Soviet Union's ROC shrank
90% from forced irrigation schemes
man-made ecological disaster China's
great leap forward killed 30 to 45
million and left scarred landscapes
Socialism's the one with the body count
human and environmental AOC implies
wealth accumulation comes at others
expense Nonsense It's not a zero sum
game Hong Kong had no resources in 1945
By 1997 its per capita GDP topped
$36,000 higher than Britain's through
free markets Singapore's went from $500
in 1965 to $82,000 Today wealth grew It
didn't steal from anyone Socialism's
alternative Cuba's average wage is $30 a
month after 60 years of fairness The
Soviet Union's GDP per capita peaked at
$7,000 while the US hit $20,000 by the
1980s Socialism doesn't spread wealth it
spreads misery and this unredeemable
line She's enjoying capitalism's fruits
her iPhone her Netflix her congressional
salary while decrying it Hypocrisy aside
socialism is the one with no redemption
Every try Venezuela Cuba the USSR ends
in rationing stagnation and tyranny Why
it ignores reality But here's what she
misses and I've said this for decades
First capitalism isn't about
concentrating wealth It creates it and
society benefits The top 1% pay 40% of
US taxes $600 billion a year funding
roads schools hospitals Second
government can't eliminate poverty It
redistributes it stifling the innovation
that actually solves it The US spent $22
trillion on welfare since the 60s
Poverty still here Markets cut global
poverty in half in 25 years Third
socialism fails everywhere not from bad
execution but because it denies scarcity
in human nature People work for
incentives not
slogans Mrs Kaziocortez can clutch her
pearls all she wants But history's not a
suggestion It's a warning Capitalism's
lifted more people than her ideology
ever will she'd see that if she traded
her rhetoric for a ledger and some
numbers you know just as there's all of
this fear-mongering that government is
going to take over every corporation and
government is going to take over every
business or every form of production um
we should be scared right now because
corporations have taken over our
government
And in my
opinion we should be wary of any entity
in which both of those things are
combined whether it's through one way or
the other Um and that's why the emphasis
in democratic socialism is on democracy
And it's not about you know it it's it's
just as much a transformation about
bringing democracy to the workplace so
that we have a say and that we don't
check all of our rights at the door
every time we cross the threshold into
our workplace Because at the end of the
day as workers and as people as society
we're the ones creating wealth not a
corporate CEO It's not a CEO that's make
that's actually creating $4 billion a
year It is the millions of workers in
this country that's creating billions of
dollars of economic productivity a year
and our system should reflect that Mrs
Aassiocortez keeps piling on the
rhetoric but still light on facts and
heavy on fantasy This idea of democratic
socialism and workplace democracy sounds
noble Who doesn't like democracy but
it's a recipe for economic disaster
wrapped in a feel-good slogan Let's cut
through the noise and deal with reality
because that's what matters She says
workers alone create wealth and CEOs are
just parasites skimming the profits
That's a fairy tale Wealth isn't
conjured up by labor in a vacuum It's
the product of capital risk and vision
working together Take a company like
Ford Workers built the cars Sure But
Henry Ford invented the assembly line
invested his savings and took the gamble
when 90% of new businesses fail US
Census data shows over half collapse
within 5 years CEOs aren't sitting in
ivory towers twirling mustaches They're
making decisions where to invest what to
produce how to compete Jeff Bezos didn't
steal Amazon's $4 billion in annual
profit He built a system that employs
1.5 million people and delivers value
worldwide Workers matter but without
capital and leadership there's no
factory no jobs no wealth Socialism's
tried her experiment Soviet collective
farms run by workers produced famine 5
to 10 million dead in 1921 to22 because
no one's accountable when everyone's in
charge Uh Venezuela's state-run oil
industry once a global powerhouse now
pumps less than Iraq under sanctions
Outputs down 75% since 1999 Labor
without direction is chaos not
productivity Then there's this workplace
democracy notion that businesses should
be run like town halls Businesses aren't
governments They're voluntary
associations You don't vote on how to
build a car You do it efficiently or
lose to someone who does Imagine voting
on every decision at
Apple The markets would still be flip
phones Markets reward merit and results
not feelings Yugoslavia tried worker
managed firms in the 20th century
Productivity tanked inflation soared and
the system crumbled by the '9s Why no
one risks their own skin in a collective
Incentives vanish Capitalism's voluntary
exchange workers trade labor for wages
owners risk capital for profit beats
utopian experiments every time
Now her claim that corporations have
taken over government that's half right
but she's got the wrong villain Free
markets don't cause cronyism Government
overreach does When politicians control
$4 trillion in annual spending 20% of US
GDP corporations lobby for favors That's
not capitalism it's corporatism A
distortion of markets by the state Look
at the 2008 bailouts Banks got handouts
because government picked winners not
because markets demanded it Hong Kong
thrived with a 15% tax rate and minimal
meddling Per capita GDP hit 49,000 by
2020 Singapore is at 82,000 Contrast
that with socialist meddling Venezuela's
government owns everything Yet 96% of
its people live in poverty today Perov
data The threat isn't corporations It's
bureaucrats with too much power Let me
wrap this up with three truths she keeps
dodging First wealth comes from capital
risk-taking and labor combined not labor
alone Workers need tools and direction
CEOs provide them Second the real danger
uh isn't corporate power It's government
intervention that rigs the game creating
cronyism Socialism loves to exploit
Third businesses run on voluntary
exchange not workplace democracy Force
that and you kill efficiency and
innovation Look at history East
Germany's Turbons versus West Germany's
BMWs
One side voted with its feet over the
wall Mr Okazo Cortez wants a system that
reflects her vision Reality doesn't bend
divisions it breaks them She'd see that
if she looked at the numbers instead of
the mirror