Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Out the Oligarchs and Damn Iron Man

00:00:00.000 classes in session how's everybody doing welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session episode i don't

00:00:10.400 know a kabillion i feel like i've done a lot guys i feel like i've done a lot but this one

00:00:16.320 is kind of a part two and not last tuesday but the tuesday prior i did an episode talking about

00:00:23.440 what it is to be a democratic country because we're throwing around the word democracy like

00:00:29.280 People know what they're talking about, and they don't, and they're equating democracy

00:00:33.160 to unlimited freedom. There should be nothing limiting what I get to do in this democracy

00:00:42.560 that I have, and politicians should do exactly what I stipulate, and all of that's not true.

00:00:48.840 I have a coffee today, so if you hear me taking a sip, that's because I'm really lazy,

00:00:53.560 and it's the start of March break. I have a Buffy cup. If anybody

00:00:59.040 is just listening and they care to know what cup I'm drinking out of. So today I'm going to talk

00:01:05.160 a little bit about the limitations of democracies and this notion that not only do we not have

00:01:12.200 unlimited rights, but there are so many things that are getting in the way of a real democracy

00:01:18.900 and I think we should address them today. And I think what's going on all over the world,

00:01:25.480 what's going on with the trucker convoy, the vaccine stuff, the mandate stuff,

00:01:30.160 the horrific realities in the Ukraine right now. These are all pushing and leaning towards what it

00:01:37.160 is to be in a democracy and the real significant limits of a democracy. And a lot of people equate

00:01:45.160 democracy and capitalism. And well, I just think that might be fundamentally flawed.

00:01:50.920 I think equating real democracy with capitalism, perhaps, you guys are going to all flood my

00:01:59.100 comments with communist propaganda, but I'm not necessarily advocating communism. I'm saying

00:02:05.880 perhaps, maybe, maybe capitalism is getting in the way. And I'm going to give you a lot of

00:02:12.200 examples today. So the first limit of a full democracy. So what this is, nobody on the planet

00:02:18.300 has a full functional perfected democracy everybody gets that right i mean at the very

00:02:25.820 least we have a representative democracy and in that there's all these inherent flaws first i'm

00:02:32.620 going to talk about the probably the biggest limitation which are the benefits of the rich

00:02:40.220 So, in a way, the more money you have, the more benefit that can be afforded to you in a democracy.

00:02:50.220 In a capitalist system, the more money you have, the more power you have, the more freedom you have. All of that is true.

00:02:58.220 I don't think anybody can actually disagree with me on the premise that money buys a level of freedom and a level of protection and all of those things.

00:03:09.220 things and in a democracy it shifts where the power lies so let's go through some of the things

00:03:17.300 that wealthy individuals and again i'm not blaming so before everybody backpedals and says well i

00:03:22.900 work hard for my look it's not about how hard you work it's not about whether it's deserved or not

00:03:29.460 it's about the benefits that come with having a full wallet so number one under the benefits of

00:03:35.940 the rich the rich are usually have are usually can be more educated and have much easier access

00:03:44.580 to education and therefore at the very least gives them a better starting point i live in canada

00:03:54.340 and and we have a very very robust for the most part public education system but i work at a

00:04:00.260 private school. And that private school is not cheap, guys. It is not cheap at all. And what I

00:04:06.940 often see in that private school, and I love where I work, make no mistake about it. But what these

00:04:15.600 kids get is they get a leg up. For example, my classrooms go anywhere from 10 to 15 students in

00:04:23.800 the classroom. When you then compare it to the public system, where it's 20 to 30 to 35 kids in

00:04:30.900 the classroom, I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to understand that the kid in the

00:04:36.400 smaller classroom with more accountability, with more connection to parents, and all of those

00:04:42.360 things that go hand in hand, we all follow the same curriculum, those kids are getting more

00:04:46.380 attention, right? Those kids are getting more focused than they could be getting from fantastic

00:04:55.400 teachers in the public board. I'll give you an example. I often say, listen, kids that are going

00:05:01.840 to get 97s are going to get 97s. It doesn't, you could pretty much put them anywhere. Go ahead and

00:05:07.540 put them anywhere. That's not who I'm talking about. And the kids that hate school and don't

00:05:12.400 want to go and drag their heels or go and just avoid it at all costs, guess what? They're pretty

00:05:19.240 much not going to like it anywhere. Excuse me while I take a sip of my coffee. Again, the Buffy

00:05:26.580 mug. Those kids are going to go, you know, aren't going to be successful anywhere they've decided

00:05:32.320 for whatever their reasons. Now, here's where a private school comes into play. A good private

00:05:39.180 school. By the way, there's a lot of horrible private schools, but a good private school

00:05:42.320 will come into play this way. And these are the legitimate ways. I'm not even talking

00:05:45.900 about the illegitimate ways where money buys you privilege, buys you a call to the dean

00:05:50.840 at Notre Dame or whatever. I'm not even there yet. These are just genuine privileges. The

00:05:57.380 kids that get like 50s to let's say 75s, those kids, the kids that are quiet, the kids that

00:06:05.840 are good, the kids that don't cause much havoc, they get their stuff done, they do it at bare

00:06:10.980 minimum, and they roll through. Either they don't care to be focused, or they're having problems and

00:06:16.540 legitimate issues in focusing and getting the work done. Those kids will have the best chance

00:06:23.220 of increasing that grade by, I'd say, functionally 15 to 20%. Those kids, the kids that want to change,

00:06:31.840 the kids that want to work hard, they just don't see a path to do so. And they can't get enough

00:06:37.900 attention from public school teachers because there's so many kids in that class. And usually

00:06:43.120 that class would have kids that would demand a lot of their attention. So number one, they're the

00:06:50.500 ones that get a better education. Now that's not including the calls that can be made, the

00:06:56.320 the significant sums of money that allow for the calls to be made or whatever.

00:07:01.600 Also in a democracy, the people with money can run. A lot of people talk about why I don't run.

00:07:10.600 There's lots of reasons that I don't. But an interesting reason is because I can't afford

00:07:18.260 to take a year off of school, a year off of my teaching in order to direct all my efforts

00:07:25.660 to politics and to getting elected and the kinds of friends that you would need in order to get

00:07:34.900 that campaign properly funded. And this just gets worse the higher up you go. And in the States,

00:07:39.320 it's even worse than here. So that's an incredible limitation on who can even be involved in a real

00:07:47.940 way in elected government. Now, that is not to say teachers can't be elected. Of course,

00:07:54.520 We have a prime minister that has, but look at who else he is. Look at what other support he has outside of his name. Look at the other support that other candidates have, right?

00:08:06.820 And what we've done, in essence, by limiting who can run based on the money that they can accumulate or the money that they can put towards something, we have really limited the intelligent, passionate, capable people from being able to run if they wanted to.

00:08:27.740 Now, they don't all want to, but if they wanted to based on an economic platform.

00:08:33.080 What an incredible limitation.

00:08:36.260 Another limitation to democracy, not everybody can vote.

00:08:39.720 So in Canada, you have to be 18 to vote.

00:08:42.800 We all know this, right? 0.67

00:08:44.380 This is the age of majority.

00:08:45.840 You have to be 18 to vote. 0.86

00:08:47.300 You have to be 18 to go to war.

00:08:48.880 We're going to make you be 19 until you can drink a beer.

00:08:51.020 I don't quite understand that.

00:08:52.520 But this is the bottom line for us, right?

00:08:55.240 So all of these kids that, by the way, once they get through, let's say, my grade 10 civics,

00:09:02.300 they know more about the political system in Canada and in Ontario than most adults I speak to

00:09:08.300 no joke and that's because those kids are being forced into it sure they're being forced to

00:09:13.600 research it they understand the platforms they can tell me what the PPC said they can tell me what

00:09:18.460 Pierre Poliver said like they know because I've kind of forced it upon them and that's you know

00:09:24.660 my job as a teacher but there's a lot of adults who just vote conservative or vote liberal because

00:09:29.960 the way their family voted it's the way they've always voted they don't take time nor do they have

00:09:35.160 to take time to really be educated so they can't vote if you are homeless in canada you cannot vote

00:09:42.600 why because it doesn't tie you to a riding and if you're not tied to a riding now if you're in

00:09:47.800 a shelter pretty consistently that they can use that as your permanent address but at the end of

00:09:53.160 the day there's a lot of people that are sort of taken out of that system and it changes we're

00:09:57.880 talking about a full democracy right and don't tell me that these policies don't affect kids 0.99

00:10:05.000 because you go down to florida in here about the don't say gay bull crap i was almost gonna swear 0.98

00:10:11.240 there but i took control of myself going on in florida like all of these policies and who it 0.99

00:10:17.000 affects and these kids we're saying these kids aren't political beings they don't have political

00:10:23.640 rights. They don't get the power to decide who creates, conforms, manipulates, indoctrinates

00:10:32.020 their curriculum. That's a limitation to democracy. Number three, and guys, this is a big one.

00:10:41.020 Companies, multinational, transnational corporations. Now, we have seen this time and

00:10:49.640 time and time again. But these are the companies that give huge sums of donations to political

00:10:57.520 powerhouses. Huge sums. These interest groups can technically have access to the government

00:11:05.400 at all turns. Donating millions of dollars. Now, there are limits, sure, but let's be honest. We

00:11:12.960 all find ways around those limitations, right? There's always other people that can donate for

00:11:17.740 us. And what it does is it puts your issue, your pressure, your particular political perspective

00:11:28.060 on the top of the block, right? There's a reason the NRA is so incredibly powerful

00:11:36.900 because they have a boatload of money. Now, some people would say, listen, Joanna,

00:11:41.320 but the NRA has a boatload of money because there's a lot of Americans supporting the NRA

00:11:45.400 and what they stand for. And I get it. I get it. So there is that aspect to it.

00:11:51.440 What about oil companies? What about the massive, massive political power that these oil companies

00:12:03.740 wield? And as we've been seeing, if we're going to talk about Russia and the Ukraine,

00:12:08.540 sorry, Ukraine, I say the Ukraine, that is completely unacceptable. And I'm trying

00:12:13.180 very, very hard to work myself around it. Between Russia and Ukraine, obviously the political and

00:12:21.720 economic power of an oil company can move mountains. You want to know why we haven't

00:12:27.860 shifted anything significant? I don't think you have to look far. You really want to be an

00:12:33.720 environmental organization or you want to be an environmental politician that's going to

00:12:37.560 transform all of this, you're coming up against some of the biggest, deepest pockets on the

00:12:43.860 political stage right now. And that's a limitation, right? Now, can these people represent parts of

00:12:51.760 the American or Canadian public? Of course they can. Of course they can. But the notion that it's

00:12:58.460 the average voter really gets taken out of context, right?

00:13:05.460 Another problem, this one's going to get a little complicated, elections don't always

00:13:11.340 represent the public.

00:13:13.400 We know this, and I'm, for the love of all that's holy, not talking about Trump and the

00:13:18.480 elections fraudulent, I'm talking about fundamentally the way elections work.

00:13:24.020 is always a difference, both in the United States and Canada, between the public vote,

00:13:29.540 the popular vote, and the actual power the politician gets at the end of the day. So in

00:13:36.340 the United States, you will always have how many electoral college votes did the president get,

00:13:43.460 and how much of the popular vote did they get. And those don't always match. There's been many

00:13:51.140 a president that hasn't won the popular vote yet become president and a lot of people are like i

00:13:56.580 don't understand how that could happen well it happens because different states have different

00:14:00.660 populations and those states were granted power or electoral college votes based on their population

00:14:08.820 and here's the key and how much money they brought into the union the united states have never ever

00:14:17.300 made any bones about the fact. They believe that the more money you have, the greater stake you

00:14:22.980 have in America's success and the greater power you should have in their democratic reforms and

00:14:30.520 principles. Now, Canada is a little bit different. We didn't necessarily come to the same conclusion,

00:14:36.220 but we have a similar outset of a problem. I'll give you an example and try to, I don't know,

00:14:41.600 I should have drawn something here. Maybe I had a blackboard behind me, but I did.

00:14:44.780 So here's how it works in Canada. In Canada, we have 338 ridings. They're all divided up.

00:14:50.760 Each riding represents about 150, 200,000 people. If I win riding A, and there's, let's say,

00:14:57.780 four other parties running, I don't necessarily need to win a majority of those votes. I just

00:15:02.860 need to win more votes than any of the other four parties. Are you with me so far? So technically,

00:15:08.600 I can win a riding with 25% of the vote, technically. Now, if my party did that over

00:15:15.220 half, half, just over half of the ridings, and at every turn, my party just wins by the skin of

00:15:21.680 their teeth at 25, 26, 27% of the popular vote in that riding, but we all win the seats. We all go

00:15:29.380 to the House of Commons. And my, the second party, and I know I'm, I'm simplifying this, but the

00:15:35.660 party that came in second, they win just under half of those seats. But every time they win,

00:15:40.880 they win with 55, 60% of the popular vote in that riding. They could have, in essence,

00:15:48.760 gotten twice as many votes in Canada as I did. Yet my party gets to form government and I get

00:15:55.740 to be the prime minister. So there's flaws in the system. So a lot of people have advocated in

00:16:01.560 Canada, there should be, you know, it shouldn't be based on riding. It should be based on

00:16:07.440 proportionality. So if my party gets 52% of the popular vote, that's how many seats I get. Here's

00:16:12.520 the problem. Israel has this and there's at least 26 major parties. So they all end up splitting

00:16:19.340 the vote. And what happens is there's a lot of coalitions that form and who I voted for doesn't

00:16:24.220 necessarily, nothing comes to fruition anyways. So there's problems there. A lot more people believe

00:16:30.420 that there should be a preferential ballot system, a ranking system, if you will. So if I

00:16:36.000 have four parties running in my riding, I then rank them one through four, and then it's averaged

00:16:42.100 out, right? So what is taking it into account is people that are loved but hated equally,

00:16:49.520 so that the party that we get at the end of the day is a little bit more reflective of everybody

00:16:55.560 that's in the country. Here's another big one. And this is the one, oh my, we're coming to terms

00:17:02.840 with right now. We really, really are. We cannot cope. We cannot legislate. We cannot democratize

00:17:13.700 globalization. So right now, guys, we're seeing, I don't know what it is in the States, but in

00:17:20.980 Canada, we're seeing a huge rise in gas prices. Now, it's not all because of what's going on in

00:17:27.060 Russia, but a big chunk of it is. And the reality is, is that as countries now, our economies are

00:17:35.860 intricately linked with many, many, many countries. So a ripple in Russia or China or Germany,

00:17:44.420 or they can have catastrophic effects all the way around. So when I get elected in Canada

00:17:53.980 as prime minister, let's say, I've promised you 10 things. And all of a sudden, there's a war

00:18:02.160 in Russia, or there's an aggressive attacking of Russia and attacking Ukraine. And now gas prices

00:18:11.520 go through the roof. I have to make huge economic decisions in order to manage that situation.

00:18:18.120 And those 10 things that I promised are all of a sudden off the table because I can't do them

00:18:21.800 anymore because I got to redirect. Our economies are so intricately connected and our militaries,

00:18:33.080 we're all talking about NATO, are so connected that for me to sit here and say, Canada as a

00:18:40.040 country, I can control it, we are sovereign, is a flat out lie. Just a flat, we are not sovereign.

00:18:48.820 And we have proved that time and time again, both with the economy, with the environment,

00:18:55.100 with viral transmissions. Time and time and time again, we prove that the notion of democracy

00:19:02.860 as it runs Canada is flawed, is inherently flawed in this new democratic order, sorry,

00:19:09.720 in this new globalized order. And a lot of people are having problems with this, right? They're

00:19:13.620 so upset at globalization. They're so upset at this idea of a global world order. And they're

00:19:21.660 advocately, sorry, they're angrily against it, right? They're talking about the world economic

00:19:30.420 form and all of these big powerhouses. Guys, it's already here. It's already here. It's why you have

00:19:35.640 Kiwis in December. It's why all of your shirts come from Bangladesh. It's why our oil is coming 0.99

00:19:44.240 from Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Venezuela. Look, it's already here. It's not new. You just have

00:19:51.660 had politicians pretending as though we can control it. We can limit it. We can't. If we

00:19:58.880 want our economies intricately linked with other countries, this is the new order of capitalism.

00:20:07.280 Do I have problems with it? Of course I do. Of course I do. But I don't know if that's a

00:20:13.540 democratic problem. I think it's a capitalist problem. I'm going to get to that in a second.

00:20:20.700 The biggest problem here, a lot of people are like, who goes to war and who doesn't go to war

00:20:25.800 And how do we decide all these things? Because in a globalized world, I don't elect who runs the United Nations. I don't elect NATO. I don't elect these. And we don't have any supra. That's not super, but supra, meaning above. We don't elect these above ranking politicians that are making these choices. And yet we are.

00:20:48.360 right? What we've done is we've elected a prime minister or a president, depending on your system,

00:20:54.260 that is going to make choices internationally. But those international choices, they're just

00:21:00.840 one of many. So that idea of sovereignty or that idea of control is much, much less than we think

00:21:10.080 it should be or it actually is. Trudeau or any Biden in the United States, any of these people

00:21:17.660 don't have nearly the control over state politics as we once thought they did.

00:21:24.580 And we've been, by the way, and it doesn't matter who you are, because any, by the way, 0.96

00:21:29.080 anybody saying, oh, well, we should be more isolationist or free trade is garbage. 0.95

00:21:33.300 Those were all conservatives pushing that, as well as liberals, right? 0.95

00:21:39.360 NAFTA, you had Brian Mulroney on our side of the fence, and you guys all had Reagan down there.

00:21:46.020 That's who sat down and negotiated that. Don't forget that. I'm not blaming a party. I just think it's hysterical that we get to this point and you start hearing Republicans saying, let's make America great again. Great to win. By the way, it was also your party who forged ahead when it was going to benefit you.

00:22:04.980 right but when we enter into these international agreements they might benefit us they might not

00:22:12.080 it depends how the tide turns also in a democracy we're supposed to not discriminate

00:22:18.660 right in a democracy you're supposed to have the right to vote but your right to vote and

00:22:26.160 your freedom isn't supposed to intrude or infringe on somebody else's and this is where we really

00:22:32.580 really stepped in it in every country I could even possibly imagine because the majority

00:22:37.360 have utilized their power and their strength and their money to consistently oppress the minority.

00:22:47.700 And whether that minority be women, be a racial minority, be a sexual minority, be a trans minority, 0.65

00:22:53.840 doesn't really seem to matter, be a class minority. Why don't we talk about that one a

00:22:59.540 little bit more, it doesn't seem to matter. Discrimination and abuse of that system is 0.94

00:23:07.780 pretty consistent. And again, my mind goes to capitalism. My mind goes to what can we buy

00:23:16.980 and how can we manipulate the system to get what we want? When you have a guy like Elon Musk,

00:23:25.180 and I know everybody, I've seen pictures of him dressed up like Captain America. First of all,

00:23:31.360 if Elon Musk was going to be an Avenger, he's Iron Man. Let's be honest. And unless an Iron

00:23:37.500 Man has the whole other Avengers keeping him in line, what happens to Iron Man? It doesn't go

00:23:42.920 well. He's no Captain America. But you have a guy like Elon Musk. Think about what just happened

00:23:49.120 with Russia. Sorry, more coffee. What just happened with Russia is Elon Musk decided, 0.96

00:23:56.820 and here's the scary part, that he was going to repurpose Starlink satellites to benefit Ukraine

00:24:04.600 in this war. Now, everybody champions Elon Musk, right? What an amazing thing he just did.

00:24:14.320 that's great and he did right it was an amazing thing it was a great choice

00:24:21.240 here's the problem and we go back to the avengers guys we really really true it's amazing what you

00:24:27.460 can learn from marvel what happens when he makes a decision that doesn't benefit the right side

00:24:35.260 the moral side the ethical side what happens when it's just a decision that benefits elon musk's

00:24:41.260 side or who's he's what what we've done by by allowing such a mass accumulation and i mean

00:24:50.400 mass accumulation of wealth speaking of oligarchs and i know we love to point to them in russia but

00:24:57.720 speaking of oligarchs we've give them we've allowed these individuals through proper channels

00:25:03.840 of capitalism, such incredible wealth that one man gets to decide where his satellites

00:25:12.020 are repurposed. Where's the democracy in that? What happened to my vote there? What happened

00:25:22.300 to the majority rule and debate and discussion? What happened there? And again, did I like

00:25:32.100 the decision musk made sure am i going to always eventually a guy like that builds ai and it almost

00:25:40.460 destroys the world like it it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the inherent flaws in that kind

00:25:48.000 of wealth and over the last 10 years guys that kind of wealth might even over the last 2008 was

00:25:53.980 probably a pretty big marker. 2008, a bunch of people got super, super, super rich betting

00:26:02.820 against mortgage rates, betting against people keeping their house. And you saw their income

00:26:09.700 go through the roof. And over these past few years with COVID, and everybody's struggling

00:26:15.740 and struggling and struggling, somehow major corporations and billionaires just accumulate,

00:26:22.160 accumulate and accumulate. And you guys can go check out those numbers. I'm not going to read

00:26:26.540 them off here. There's no point. It's a fact. So in that mass accumulation, what has it done to

00:26:34.200 democracy? Where's the union? Where's the balance? Where's the balance of that kind of economic power

00:26:45.940 and the worker power that allowed for it to happen.

00:26:49.740 Where is it?

00:26:50.540 Because I don't see it.

00:26:52.060 I don't see it.

00:26:52.860 And the reason why those companies will pay their workers well

00:26:56.460 isn't just to be good guys,

00:26:58.380 it's to keep a union out.

00:26:59.720 It's to keep a union out

00:27:00.840 because we know that that's going to balance my,

00:27:03.420 you know, that's going to mitigate or balance

00:27:05.320 or create some sort of deficit on my power.

00:27:10.380 Hundreds of billions of dollars,

00:27:12.340 One man deciding to repurpose his, not his Bentley, his satellite to be used in a war.

00:27:24.700 That's a hell of a lot of power that has no oversight, that has no democratic principles.

00:27:30.860 And that's the output and the end result of capitalism.

00:27:37.160 So when people all the time, and I know you guys have heard this probably when you're kids in school, right?

00:27:42.340 all the time you'd hear dictatorship and communism and capitalism and and

00:27:50.740 democracy and somehow capitalism and democracy have to go hand in hand

00:27:56.420 the freedom of capitalism and the freedom of democracy those go hand in hand but nobody's

00:28:02.020 talking about the aftermath of that nobody's talking about the end of capitalism and i really

00:28:10.180 think we're somewhere we're after capitalism where's the fair competition who's competing with

00:28:16.980 amazon where's the fair competition we have monopolies left right and center we have

00:28:25.600 oligarchs guys worth hundreds of billions of dollars we've never seen this disparity of

00:28:32.540 wealth in a very long time we have this weird kind of post-capitalistic feudalism

00:28:40.180 where certain people have become self-appointed kings and queens.

00:28:50.300 This doesn't necessarily have to have a sexist underpinning,

00:28:52.960 but it seems that a lot of men are the ones becoming billionaires.

00:28:57.460 All of this, all of this reality limits freedom.

00:29:02.640 You want to talk about real limits of freedom?

00:29:05.200 It's not because you had to scan something to get into a restaurant, 0.59

00:29:08.500 Make sure you had a vaccine passport. Real limits of freedom in a place where money buys power is who gets to limit your money, who controls, who gets paid what, how much they get, where they do business with, which countries they do business with, which peoples they take advantage of.

00:29:31.500 And by the way, guys, we've stood up for our people, right?

00:29:34.100 We have all these environmental labor standards going in Canada and the United States.

00:29:40.280 For our labor force, we have workers' rights.

00:29:44.140 We have health rights of all of our workers.

00:29:47.580 And what's happened?

00:29:48.820 All of these businesses have been allowed to pick up and go somewhere else and take

00:29:53.540 advantage of a country that is poor and desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to have

00:29:59.180 the company there.

00:30:00.840 It's how we get our $5 t-shirts.

00:30:03.820 We get our $5 t-shirts because they've outsourced that labor.

00:30:08.860 And when we get angry about where we've outsourced it, don't.

00:30:13.540 Don't.

00:30:14.280 These are people that are so desperate, they'll do anything to get paid, even if it's next to nothing.

00:30:22.120 Who's making money on that?

00:30:24.820 It's not me.

00:30:25.880 It's not you, unless Elon's listening to this right now, or Bezos is listening to this right now.

00:30:34.020 It is these major corporations that are making money on the cheap labor.

00:30:38.680 My question is, how much money do we need to make, folks?

00:30:43.620 The United States love to talk.

00:30:45.500 Politicians love to talk about how horrible illegal immigration is into the United States.

00:30:53.000 How awful it is. 0.91

00:30:54.100 all these people sneaking across the border and working illegally who are they working for 0.91

00:31:00.020 who are they working for republican party i'll tell you who they're working for they're working

00:31:06.500 for companies like tyson tyson is a huge meat company a lot of chicken holiday ham they

00:31:14.100 consistently hire illegal immigrants coming from mexico in order to utilize cheap scared 0.99

00:31:24.100 disempowered labor. And every once in a while, ICE will swoop in and arrest a bunch of them all as 0.99

00:31:30.340 being illegals and send them all back to Mexico and do their job. And Tyson just gets a whole new

00:31:37.100 recruiting process going. You want to end illegal immigration? It's not a democracy issue. It is a

00:31:48.580 human rights issue. But if you want to end it, every time a company's caught hiring an illegal

00:31:55.240 immigrant, because they're always doing it for their purpose, charge that company $150,000 a 0.97

00:32:02.940 person. How about charge that company $200,000 a person, force that company to then pay for 1.00

00:32:13.780 their immigration status. That's an even better one. I like this better because it actually 1.00

00:32:18.180 takes care of the person that was willing to risk life and limb to have a job and feed his family 0.99

00:32:23.540 or her family how about this Tyson gets caught with an immigrant great an illegal immigrant

00:32:30.580 Tyson you now pay that person two hundred thousand dollars and and you sponsor them

00:32:39.860 to get legal worker status in the United States of America how about that you want to see illegal

00:32:46.340 immigration end tomorrow why do we keep punishing the weak and the poor for what the powerful and

00:32:57.060 the wealthy and i don't mean dr wealthy i mean oligarch wealthy i mean that guy in russia that

00:33:04.660 has the 800 million dollar boat that guy i mean the guy that has his own satellite guys i just

00:33:14.980 We kind of assume that it's okay.

00:33:17.280 We all watched Iron Man and didn't really think it was possible.

00:33:21.940 I'm waiting for Elon's suit.

00:33:24.780 And if he had any courage, maybe he already would have made one.

00:33:28.020 But he's not that kind.

00:33:28.880 He hasn't been trapped in a bunker yet.

00:33:33.740 But these limits on our freedoms are significant.

00:33:38.820 Right?

00:33:39.300 You step out of line, who gets to silence you?

00:33:44.980 I don't worry as much about my government than I do about people with money.

00:33:50.880 We talk about the media all the time.

00:33:53.520 All the time we talk about the media and how horrible the media is, right?

00:33:59.860 Awful.

00:34:00.740 If I hear the words legacy media from, what's his face, Jordan Peterson, one more time.

00:34:06.760 Well, where do you want your media to come from?

00:34:09.160 I get it.

00:34:10.140 I get it.

00:34:11.300 We do not want it coming from a handful of massive corporations that could get to control the narrative, right?

00:34:22.400 But where else do we get it?

00:34:24.280 Do we get it from small companies emerging and then trusting them?

00:34:29.120 How easy do you think it is to buy the small company?

00:34:33.760 We still live in a capitalist system.

00:34:36.040 You just want to shove more media into a broken system.

00:34:41.420 I advocated the other day that we should have a fully funded public media system.

00:34:49.960 And in Canada, it's the CBC.

00:34:51.600 And everybody hates the CBC because they're so hard on conservatives.

00:34:54.840 I think they're so hard on conservatives because conservatives have been wrong a lot lately.

00:34:58.660 but how about we fully fund the cbc but we don't make it contingent upon the government that's in

00:35:06.460 power that day i'm not saying it should be our only media but how about that's one aspect

00:35:12.400 how about no matter who gets elected that funding stays consistent how about we appoint

00:35:20.420 different uh governmental or agencies get to appoint them just like to the supreme court

00:35:26.260 If we can appoint the Supreme Court and call it fair and impartial, for the most part, unless people are way off the hill, how can we not do the same thing for a media agency to be run by the government? And I'm not doing it to the exclusion of everybody else. Everybody's talking about bias. Of course there's bias, Jordan.

00:35:46.640 there's by of course stop assuming that there isn't but please for the all that's holy stop

00:35:55.500 saying a b and c are bias but the one i listened to now they're bang on no bias there nobody can

00:36:03.380 buy them off in an age of capitalism everybody seems to have a price and the more money you

00:36:14.140 accumulate, the more power you can wield. And if that's true, if that's true, there's the

00:36:21.260 fundamental flaw in democracy. The thing we were told as a kid that went hand in hand, democracy

00:36:29.300 and capitalism, capitalism in the stage we're in right now, there's the flaw. There's the problem.

00:36:38.220 Now what? People are talking about an oligarchy of the wealthy in Russia. Of course there is.

00:36:43.380 oh but guys let's not pretend there isn't here what about the westons by the way my american

00:36:51.520 people the westons are a huge canadian family they own shoppers drug merton loblas it's a

00:36:56.380 it's a massive conglomerate right huge huge power we have rogers media it's our version

00:37:04.420 of halliburton you all make you know missiles we just make bad tv the oligarchy of the wealthy

00:37:12.640 is incredibly powerful

00:37:16.960 it manipulates everything from who controls the satellites to what lawyers i can buy

00:37:25.760 in a system that's based on rule of law that's a fundamental principle of democracy

00:37:31.520 yet the more money you have the more lawyers you can buy

00:37:34.960 Why? It changes the system, the fundamental premise of democracy. It shatters it

00:37:43.640 into a million pieces. If I can buy eight lawyers, O.J. Simpson,

00:37:51.720 changes democracy. It changes the rule of law. Even better, if I can pick up the phone and call

00:37:58.400 somebody and have something changed. How much do we think that happens? Who has any idea?

00:38:03.380 it happens right now and now and now in that system when money can buy that kind of privilege

00:38:12.920 and that kind of get out of jail free card literally what happens to democracy

00:38:18.880 right and that was the whole conversation about where money comes from and how money filters into

00:38:27.540 a country and what it does and who it pressures because all of that all of that money that's why

00:38:34.500 everybody's talking about cryptocurrency all that money does is advocates and allows for power

00:38:43.140 in a capitalist system money is power and what is power the ability for me to exert my will

00:38:53.060 over others and if that's true and that's what power is then in a capitalist or a

00:39:01.860 post-capitalist system where we have incredibly imbalanced

00:39:09.380 these these increases in the accumulation of billions of dollars in the hands of so few

00:39:18.180 we've broken democracy

00:39:23.060 And I don't think it's an undersell. I don't think I can stress on it enough that the more

00:39:34.780 we see this happening and the more power lands in the hands of the few. Now, I see lots of balances

00:39:42.580 in the world. I feel like the internet is really a great balance to that in a lot of ways.

00:39:49.140 But in other ways, the more money, it's funny, we have all this freedom, but we're still all drawn to the right, you know, the right sites. I didn't mean that politically, but we're all drawn to the sites that can afford the advertising and the promotion, right?

00:40:07.680 the right podcasts the right um youtube videos all of that requires money in advertising it is

00:40:21.160 no different it is no different actually than what makes a great song a lot of the time what

00:40:26.160 makes a great song well that sony just dropped 1.1 billion pushing out the new justin song

00:40:33.020 I love you, Justin, but you get my point.

00:40:35.980 What about the song that didn't get pushed?

00:40:38.320 Was it a better song?

00:40:39.380 Would more people have loved it?

00:40:40.740 Who will ever freaking know?

00:40:43.300 And music might feel like a minimal example, like it doesn't matter, superficial, who cares?

00:40:51.920 But it is a great example of the ideas that get pushed to the top are the ideas that have money and power.

00:41:02.260 And in this capitalist situation, right now, in this time, when we have such a divergence, such a difference between those handful of few that have the billions, that's a heck of a lot of power, and it's shattering, shattering the way a democracy is supposed to run.

00:41:25.120 And it keeps showing me every day that maybe capitalism and democracy don't go hand in hand. Not the way we have it. Not the way we have it. And if I can decide on where to put my satellite, how to repurpose my military grade equipment, I don't know where democracy's gone.

00:41:49.980 and on that iron man note if only he were as good looking as robert downey

00:41:57.780 and on that iron man note thank you so much for hanging out with me go check out my website guys

00:42:04.200 it's up and running unlearn16.ca you can check out my merch i'd really appreciate it speaking

00:42:10.200 of capitalism that was a horrible horrible transition into that wasn't it but i'll tell

00:42:16.620 I'm not a big company and I don't have billions. So we're all good. Thank you so much for hanging

00:42:21.680 out with me. And I will see you guys next Tuesday. Same bad time, same bad station.

00:42:28.340 Have a great week, guys. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - March 08, 2022

The One Where I Out the Oligarchs and Damn Iron Man

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