Socialist Policies Have Failed Over and Over Throughout History: Discussion

Today is election day and Democratic socialist Zam Amdani is in the lead for New York City mayor. Joining us to discuss is Joshua Phillips, senior investigative reporter for the PA Times and host of Crossroads on Epoch TV. So Josh, uh, thank you for joining us today. Always great to see you. My pleasure. Yeah. >> Yeah. So let's talk about socialism, democratic socialism specifically. In your view, um, how do you feel about whether this has become more popular, more mainstream, or more widely accepted? >> Well, you know, the Democrats right now are kind of in a difficult position. The Democratic Socialists of America is technically a third party, but they've really tried to integrate themselves into the main line of the Democratic Party because they can't win elections. So, what they've done over the years, they've infiltrated the Democratic Party. They run under the Democrat ticket. They put their candidates as Democrats and the Democrats, they haven't really wanted to split their party on behalf of them. The DSA, Democratic Socialist America elements, though they represent the more extreme kind of uh progressive, some might call it, parts of the party. The things representing more outright socialism, the things representing, you know, gender politics, race politics, these are DSA issues. Whereas the old school Democrats used to be more like the big tent. If you go back to, you know, 90s, 2000s, look where the Democrats were. Like Trump used to be a Democrat. Uh RFK Jr., you could maybe he's still a Democrat. Guys like Joe Rogan used to be Democrats. And so you you do have kind of this big 10 80% in the middle that represents what the Democratic party used to be. And some argue that the extreme positions of the DSA, they might work in local elections, but it might be a real gamble for Democrats to run with. >> Okay. So how would you classify Zoramani's policies? >> Zoramandami is going for for more I think legit socialism. But the reality is he can only do it so much under the existing system. If you want to have real socialism like pure socialism, you need to dominate everything. Which is one of the reasons why socialists often say, "Well, it wasn't real socialism or it wasn't real communism." Uh just doing it in New York City, he won't he won't have the ability to fully implement pure socialism. and he's walked back a lot of his statements. Uh he's said, for example, that he's not against that he's not for like defunding the police. People pull up old posts from he very often talked about defunding the police. Uh there are some mixed reports over his, you know, governmentrun uh again call them food halls or grocery stores. A lot of media have actually falsely quoted him saying he wants to give free food. Maybe that's part of it because you know, you could say food stamps are part of that. But what he's talking about are governmentr run governmentrun grocery stores that would offer lower prices. The reality is when you do this, it's never sustainable because it messes up the entire free market. What you're likely to have is the lack of the insight into the free market from supply and demand and you run into the same problems you have in every socialist country, which is the things in demand fly off the shelves. People buy it, people resell it. If he makes it too low of a cost, what's going to happen? You're going to have people, if for example, it's more expensive in New Jersey, driving into New York, buying it in New York, and reselling into New Jersey. It's going to upset the entire free market, and you're going to end up with shortages. >> So, can you give us some examples, real world examples where his policies are or similar uh to his policies that have been implemented elsewhere and what has happened? >> Yeah. Uh so in the United States there actually have been experiments with you call them like governmentrun grocery stores or sometime usually they're run by like nonprofits and what results in it is basically um poorly run play they close down very quickly typically you end up with large amounts of theft especially if they say they're not going to prosecute or go after crime people just steal it because why not uh you can look at you can look at California where they were experimenting with light on crime policies as it related to like storefronts and what happened, right? Anything under like $900 is a misdemeanor. What happens? People go in and they steal everything they want because there's no punishment for it. Uh you end up with resellers. This is one of the issues, for example, that New York has dealt with with like cigarette taxes. It creates a massive black market where people just buy it in one place and sell it in another because you have the free market functioning outside the system. Uh the other thing you have of course is just badly run systems where you know the issue you have with governmentr run systems as opposed to privately run if you want to have something work in the private market you have to have a few things you have to have it so it's sustainable people want to buy from it you need to have good service so people want to go there and don't go to your competitors when you make it governmentr run you remove all the kind you remove all of the information that educates what is demanded by the free market quality is served service and price. >> I mean what are the core fundamental principles of socialism? Is is it just free stuff? Uh for those of us that is not so wellversed in the subject, >> there are different degrees of socialism. So you know on the lighter end of it there's like state capitalism. Technically the Nazis, the National Socialist Party, the Nazis in Germany, uh they were technically like lighter socialism which was a mixed modeled economy. They still had some free market principles but a lot of socialist policies. And the way the Nazis worked is actually closer to the kind the type of socialism light you see a lot of people trying to put in place in the United States. Uh and what was it under the Nazis? Of course, you had the mixed model economies, what they call state interventionism. And so you'd have, for example, businesses where the government would assign people to run the businesses and you'd have a partially private, partially public system. Uh that is light socialism. And so actually again I'm not talking about the race policies of the Nazis but the economic policies. A lot of these socialists in America in terms of economic policy are closer to the Nazi party. But but if you go to like real heavy socialism that's you get closer to actual communism. And so heavier socialism is when you get to like Stalinist type policies, breadline type policies. And if you get to that end of it, what is really socialism? Socialism is when you put government is when you put communism into government. Communism is technically the negation of systems. It is not technically a government program but you can implement uh communist policies within it. There are different extents of it. More extreme policies will have things like for like social divisions. More extreme policies will have things on you know again gender policies uh agitation policies where you try to view one person as your enemy, one person as your ally. We have seen this in the United States with uh gender policies and race policies. Every communist country has some kind of narrative with that. Whether it's the evil billionaires or the evil kulocks like they had of course of the wealthy peasants in Soviet Russia. Whether it's the Jews like the Nazis had who are deemed the enemies. Whether it's the educated class for example in Cambodia, whether it's even in the United States where they called, you know, these sizes white male the enemy of the people or whether now they talk about the evil billionaires as being the enemies of you know the uh the markets. So, how do you know when socialism has um changed into communism? How how do you know when communism is here? >> Well, so this this is where a lot of people get confused between socialism and communism. Socialism is the form communism takes when implemented into government. But true communism is only achieved with the negation of systems. So, in order to achieve quote unquote real communism, the communi the socialist state would need to basically implode. you would need to basically destroy all the existing institutions to quote unquote achieve communism. And so communism is not designed to work. It's designed to destroy. When a government becomes communist, they become a socialist government. You could say they're educated or inspired by a communist type, you know, ideology or principle. But it will always be socialism when put into practice. >> So again, there are different degrees of I'm not saying Mandami is going to make New York City full on communist. He's only going to be able to do it to a certain extent. >> So, you gave examples earlier of um how socialism leads to problems, right? And history has shown that over and over. So, why do we keep trying it? >> Well, you'd think people would learn by now. >> That's my question. >> You know, I would I would say the reason is because socialism claims to offer the solution to human suffering. And you know when you're when you're told that hey people are starving the solution is to give them free food. People are suffering the solution is to kill or eliminate the people causing the suffering. Uh there are people who you know view this as being like the compassionate thing to do. But what they don't really understand is that it does not work. You don't you don't create wealth by targeting the wealthy. You create wealth by creating incentives or helping the poor build themselves up. You don't create wealth by tearing things down. You create wealth by building things. And so socialism is just based on redistribution of what is already there. Socialism really can't create wealth unless it feeds on the wealthy. But as soon as you, you know, feed on the wealthy, you remove the incentive. People stop bothering to do it and it flattens society. Socialism is for the downward trend. And so, you know, you could argue that there are problems within capitalism. A lot of people, including myself, would argue the problems that people point to in capitalism are usually from state interventionist policies. The reason, for example, why housing costs are so high, mostly because of red tape on new construction. If you want to fix the housing problem where people can't afford rent, remove these state interventionist policies which stem from socialism that prevent us from building new homes or allow monopolies to form. If you let the free market function, it means that when there's demand, you create supply, not that you restrict supply, increase demand, and then strangle society through it. Uh, so socialism always does not work because it can only work as long as you can feed on the capitalist. >> Okay, just one last question, Josh. Um, do you think there will be a big impact or maybe you don't think there will be a big impact if Mandani in fact wins this race and becomes the next mayor for New York City? There will be a big impact if Mandami wins. Uh I don't think the impact will be that heavy in New York. I and it will be I mean it will be to an extent. It's not going to be a whole lot worse than New York was I think under CO to be honest. Uh because he's going to be stopped from doing a lot of things because of the risk of losing government funding from the federal level. Trump is probably going to put his foot on the brakes and say hey you can't do that. uh it's probably not going to be a whole lot worse than California to be honest where they have a lot of these policies he's talking about already in place. And the other reality too is the city council in New York is already very far-left. They already practice a lot of these policies. But the the bigger impact is actually going to be more for what it means on the midterms and the future of the Democratic party because right now what do you have? you have you really the Democratic party looking for its new leadership and you have been looking at AOC and Bernie Sanders both of whom have been more on the Democratic Socialist of America side. Uh this is really a battle I think for the future of the Democratic party and the types of candidates who they choose as their front runners which is why Cuomo is pushing back against Mandami which is why Nancy Pelosi is pushing back against Mandami. The Democrats, I think, understand that, yeah, you might have a socialist win in a local election, but it's not going to work for the big ones. And the Democrats, if they go too far to the extreme, which is what the risk is here, they're going to lose the middle. >> Okay. Well, Josh, always well said. Thank you so much for talking to us today. >> What a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.