Hello, and we're back.

Episode 436.

I'm Trevor.

Scott, you're back from a bad headache.

Feeling better?

Oh, much better.

It's just one of those things.

I do suffer from migraines, which got me last week.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Uh, Joe, the tech guy, you're looking well.

Evening all.

Yes, he's good.

John is in the chat room.

Good on you, John.

Saw John the other day down at Kool Gatter.

Shared a beer.

Uh, at a half price happy hour.

That's pretty good.

That's good chatting, John.

All right.

Thanks, John.

Once we're, once we're off.

Once we're all fair, you better tell us what he was going to say

about, um, the FATMA payment thing.

Um,

I just, it was really just in his branch, him and one other

guy kind of voted for some motion, kind of supporting, I think.

But, um, yeah, it wasn't anything too secretive.

Right, fair

enough.

And Tanya's there, our Pastafarian leader in the chat room.

Very good.

Fair enough.

Yeah, well, gee guys, anything major happen in the

last couple of days, at all?

No, nothing that I can think of.

Yeah,

bit

of a bit of a talk.

Trump came in with an inch of losing his life.

Yes.

I think it was

closer than an inch.

Although it's debatable actually, it might have been Something else

that shattered that cut his ear?

Oh,

really?

Yeah, there was talk about a teleprompter screen having been shot.

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah, somebody with an AR 15 got 150 meters away from him on a roof and

opened fire, shot a number of shots, uh, and he got away with a bleeding ear.

Uh, whereas one person in the audience was killed, another two injured.

He also got away with one of the most iconic photographs that will

ever be taken in the history of politics or, or whatever, like that image of

him with the secret service, sort of.

Crowded around him and his blood on his face, the blue sky behind,

the American flag waving, the blood on his cheek, the fist in the air.

Within

minutes of that going online, there were rumours that

it was all staged because you know, that was a perfect chart.

And, you know, all the Secret Service had their heads down and who in their right

minds would, you know, have the president head above and, and with the photograph,

it was all staged and it was all perfect.

So obviously it's a false flag to make him seem more popular.

Yeah, there'll always be this, the weirdest of conspiracy

theories and false flag allegations.

Like, it's fun just to sit back and, and watch them all

come through.

Well, I mean, the hilarious thing, it's usually the Republicans that

are buying into the false flag stuff.

But, um, I mean, um, You know, you can despise the man as we all do,

but you've got to hand it to him in terms of the theatrics of emerging

from the ground and, and fist in the air and, and well, Scott, people are

saying that that's, You know, surely that's worth a few points in an election

and enough to get him over

the line, you would think?

What do you reckon it's got?

It's possibly enough to get him over the line because, you

know, what they're already doing is they're starting to compare,

you know, Donald Trump was shot at.

He was actually shot.

He was actually hit and he's back on the golf course today, you know, and

Joe Biden can't even walk upstairs.

Yes.

Yep.

So it plays into the image of, that he would want to portray of a

fighter and someone who's not afraid.

Of a hunter who has bone spurs.

Yes, of course, but just that, just that image is going to do a lot for

his cause, I would have thought.

So, absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean, if

we're going to go with conspiracy theories, mine is

that it's Russia, actually.

Right.

It's a win win.

If they kill him, they sow the dissent that they wanted.

They, they see the, um, the civil war that they were hoping for.

And if they miss, then, um, he gets elected and he's very friendly to Russia.

Are you seriously proposing this, or just as a funny I think it's the most

plausible of any conspiracy theory.

I think the guy was really a lone nut job, but if anybody was involved in

some form of conspiracy I would say that the Russians are the most likely.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, he didn't fall out of a window, so it's probably not the Russians.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of those things, you know, you've got a, you've got a culture

that's gun mad and everything else.

It was only a matter of time before someone took a pot shot at you.

Well, yeah.

I mean, where were the good guy with the guns?

That's the question.

Exactly.

Well, they were, I mean, obviously if the Secret Service hadn't stopped

people with weapons being in the arena.

It would never have happened.

So maybe for every other tramp rally, they should just allow

weapons into the arena and fire.

Yes.

So they can all defend him.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, and of course the right wing media is blaming the left wing

media for Oh, for their rhetoric.

Because

he was never talking about lynching people.

His supporters didn't break into the Capitol building with the equipment

for gallows in the back of a ute.

Yeah.

Yeah,

this is the Orwellian world that we live in.

Well, exactly.

The sort of pro gun and very violent side of politics.

Is he going to tone down the rhetoric, do you think?

Blaming the left.

When I think the shooter was a registered Republican.

Yeah, I mean, I've already seen a dodgy website that claimed

that he'd been arrested for various Antifa demonstrations.

I suspect that it's a misinformation site.

Did you guys hear me?

Yeah,

I can't hear you.

It's not a strange thing again.

It's bizarre.

I'm going to have to turn this off and back on again.

That's weird.

Yeah, there were lots of weird people.

I went on Twitter in the immediate aftermath because it was a little more

up to date than the mainstream press.

And there were lots of people.

Obviously, pray for Trump.

I was praying for Melania, uh, because she has to put up with him

and, um, there were lots of, oh yeah, you know, uh, if you don't vote for

Trump, you're a nobody, after this, um, and lots of, he's my president,

look at how strong and brave he is,

and Landon here is quoting.

It's Revelation 13

3, yeah, he said for the evangelical Christians, Revelation 13

3, writing about the beast, Antichrist, one of its heads seemed to have a mortal

wound, but its mortal wound was healed and the whole earth marbled at it,

which is just a thing that's basically suggesting that Trump is the Antichrist.

I think you've muted yourself, Trevor.

Okay,

there you go.

Yeah, that's good.

I've unmuted.

Thank you.

I'll let you guys loose for one minute on return and Landon

Hardbottom's quoting Revelation.

Is

he linking, um, Revelation as a predictor of what's happened here

with What he's saying is that Trump is

the Antichrist and these idiots should back away from him

because he's always the Antichrist.

There's also, um, You Somebody who apparently a couple of months ago, some

religious preacher predicted that Trump would be shot at and that he would go

deaf in one ear because the bullet would pass so close, but it would spare him.

And therefore he's, yeah, this is obviously God's will.

I wonder how many other predictions there are out there that

he's made that are not right.

Yeah.

Well, there's enough people out there making predictions that some

of them are bound to be right.

Well, exactly.

Mmm.

What do you reckon would have happened?

If he'd actually been shot dead, what would have

Melania would have been happy.

Exactly.

Yes, but what do you think would have happened in terms of politics?

I think Joe Biden would then probably feel okay that he could actually

stand down if he was actually dead.

That's assuming that Joe Biden is only really in it just to beat Donald Trump.

I don't know.

But if he is, then that's possibly with Donald Trump dead, he could possibly

then just go and enjoy a retirement.

Biden

is in it because he spent his whole life trying to become

president and now that he's president, he doesn't want to give it up.

Like, this is just a classic power grab and a power hang

on from Biden's point of view,

but there's an assumption that if you take out Trump, that all the

problems with the Republicans goes away.

And Trump is merely a symbol of the problems.

He's not the cause of the problems.

Uh, I would have thought that, um, he probably is the cause of the problem.

No, I mean, the Tea Party was around before Trump.

Yeah, but the Tea Party

was around before Trump.

Who was,

who was around before Trump?

Sorry?

Moscow Mitch.

It was Moscow Mitch.

Mitch McConnell.

Yeah.

Um, you know, the division has been there for a long time.

Um, taking out Trump might give some more space before the next one appears.

Um, but we really need to rule, uh, talk about the Supreme Court's

ruling on immunity, basically saying that the President is immune from

criminal prosecution for official acts that he commits whilst in power.

Um, the Supreme Court's dissenting opinion said this means that the

President could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate their political rival.

So Joe Biden could, uh, take out Donald Trump with impunity.

That was in their written dissent.

That was in the written dissent from the Supreme Court.

Um, uh, so I, I actually think if he's going to do that, he should

take out the Supreme Court justices that ruled in favor of this.

Who should?

The President should.

Oh, okay.

Should shoot the, the five Supreme, the five conservative Supreme Court

justices, leave space for some rational, Justice is to be appointed.

Dear YouTube censor, that is a joke.

It's not meant as serious, you know.

Don't think they're going to listen to you.

But I'm saying if he's going to do this sort of thing, uh, we'd be

better off worrying about the Supreme Court than worrying about Trump.

It's just an empire in collapse.

Trump is a, just a symptom of some much deeper problems.

But the Supreme Court is stacked.

Yes.

Um, the ruling means that effectively a dictator will be in power

within the next 20 years in America.

Absolutely.

It's one of the things I just think to myself, it's only a matter of time.

What's a classic sign of a dictator?

Well, when a dictator is nearing the end of their life.

And it's time to hand on power, who do they hand the power to?

A family member.

Yes.

Which is why he's grooming his daughter for it.

And my, what I was getting to is, with my initial question of what would

have happened had the bullet actually got him, who would be the successor?

You

think Vanka really is ready?

And I think one of those Trump kids.

would have put their hand up to say, I'm the, I'm the offspring of dear,

dear leader, dear leader Trump.

And I'm, I take the rightful place and, and they would have been threatening civil

war had they not been given his spot.

That's, that's where I think American democracy has got to, that it is now

almost hereditary that they would have considered the right to pass

on his spot to one of his kids.

I think that's the most likely scenario.

I would have thought that possibly that would be a viable option

for the Republican Party, but it isn't.

They'd be able to get it passed there.

They'd still have to vote on them.

Yeah,

well,

anyway, just that's, that's what I think it would have headed towards.

And just another example of crazy undemocratic place it's, it's fallen into.

So, yeah.

So let's put some structure in this discussion, shall we?

Um, yes, Joe, you came across a poll that said, Um, 10% of those surveyed said that

the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.

This was before the shooting.

Um,

you saw the following line as well,

and 7% said they would support force to restore

Trump to the pres presidency.

Yeah.

It was 10% who wanted the Trump stopped by force, but only 30% of them had weapons.

Mm-Hmm.

Whereas 7%.

Wanted Trump restored by force, but half of them had weapons.

So it was, which one has more weapons?

Yeah.

So, so yeah, um, you know, what have we had in this whole thing afterwards

is just a bunch of former presidents and, and current politicians, Basically

all saying that there is no place for political violence in our democracy.

All.

That was Barack Obama.

We had, um, President Biden, um, saying there's no place for this

kind of violence in America.

We had Bernie Sanders saying, Political violence is absolutely unacceptable.

Nancy Pelosi, um, I know first hand that political violence of any

kind has no place in our society.

He's hypocritical.

Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked.

Yes.

And Donald Trump was making fun of her husband.

Correct.

He was at home and some intruder.

Yes.

Trump thought that was hilarious.

Yes.

Made fun of him, et cetera.

But these people, including Barack Obama, there's no place for

political violence in our democracy.

And all these people

have used predator drones and all that sort of thing around the world.

Obama approved the use of SEAL Team 6 to go and assassinate Bin Laden.

Yes.

This guy on Twitter said, I can't stop thinking about that line.

That line is absolutely incredible.

There's no place for violence in our democracy.

Said by a war criminal, about a war criminal, during an act

of genocide they both support.

Mainstream society has ran entirely on self deluding psychosis.

That is true.

Um, Caitlin Johnson said both you and Trump, that's Biden and Trump, are

notorious perpetrators of assassination.

And um, Yeah, just the hypocrisy of these people.

Shocked!

There's no place for this violence in our democracy, yet at this very

moment they are providing weapons and support for Israel, who's committing

violent atrocities on, uh, poor Palestinians in Gaza, and just a

history of, of political assassinations.

Um, it's, it's just Orwellian, the hypocrisy of these people, um,

claiming to be so innocent and so, um, so against this sort of behaviour

when they're conducting it all over the planet against other people.

It's one of those things, I just, um, I've got to go away and think about

what, um, Jadis said about whether or not it was right to use SEAL Team 6

against, um, Bin Laden, you know, I've got to think about that because, you

know, was he a terrorist or was he, was he, was he a political operative?

You know, I don't know, it's one of those things, you know, I've

just got to think about that.

But you are right, you know, the, um, the use of predator drones went up

under Obama, and, um, you know, they used them on the assassination in,

um, of that Iranian guy that was going down to visit the Iraqi Prime Minister.

Yes, let's talk about that.

Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian Major General, killed by an American drone near Baghdad

International Airport while travelling to meet the Iraqi Prime Minister.

So he's an Iranian in Iraq and gets killed by a US drone in a, in an execution.

And this comes from Wikipedia.

There's links to various sources in it, but I'll just read, um,

the important parts, because this happened during Trump's presidency.

So this was Trump involved in an assassination of an Iranian Major General.

Um, some experts, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur,

um, Considered the assassination a likely violation of international

law as well as US domestic law.

Uh, it happened in 2020.

Five years earlier, radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Donald Trump about Soleimani.

And after initially confusing him with a Turkish leader, Trump argued

that leaders like Soleimani would be dead under his administration.

And um, so, so, what it says is that the killing of this guy, whom US

officials regarded as a facilitator of attacks on US personnel in Iraq,

was listed as the most extreme option of many options on a briefing note,

um, and what they do is there's a practice amongst Pentagon officials.

Whereby, a very extreme option is presented to presidents, so as to make

other options appear more palatable.

So, you know, when something comes up, they say, you could do A, B, C or D.

And, and one of those is really extreme, so as to make the others palatable.

And Trump chose the extreme one, which was to kill Soleimani.

I haven't heard that before.

Yes, it was only when reading this, um, according to journalist Bob Woodward, four

days before the strike, Lindsey Graham tried to change Trump's mind, as they

discussed the decision while playing golf.

I mean, that's what you do when you're the U.

S.

Empire.

You just talk about who you're going to kill while you're playing golf.

I mean, you, you want to sort of be.

Um, multitasking, so um, and then the day before, um, Trump had finalised his

decision to use the most extreme option that his advisers had provided him, which

reportedly stunned top Pentagon officials.

The New York Times report cited unidentified US officials as saying

the intelligence regarding Soleimani's alleged plot against the US was thin,

and the Ayatollah had not approved any operation for Soleimani to carry out.

In contrast to the New York Times, there were unidentified sources cited by the

Washington Post that Trump wanted to kill Soleimani to avoid the appearance

of weakness amid the ongoing Persian Gulf crisis, since his decision to call

off an airstrike against Iran in 2019, uh, led to negative media coverage.

According to the Wall Street Journal on the 10th of January 2020, Trump

purportedly told associates after the strike, After the assassination, that

he was motivated to strike Soleimani for domestic political gain, particularly to

sway Republican senators to support him in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial.

So he's basically killed this guy for political reasons to, um, beef up his

support amongst Republicans that he needed for his upcoming Senate impeachment.

Wall Street Journal claims.

That doesn't surprise me at all.

Not in the least.

None of this is surprising.

None of this.

He's

a narcissistic toddler.

He absolutely is.

Obama killed so many people that if he was to apologise for them one by one,

one per day, it would take him three years to get through the list of people

that he killed through drone attacks.

That he authorised.

It's complete shit that there's political violence.

And I mean, people would say, oh, that's not political violence, that's war.

Well, all wars, since the Second World War at least, are very political in

their origins, in their carrying out.

Oh, yeah.

Some of the funnier side, the funnier side of this, um, according to the

Shovel, the NRA has responded to the Donald Trump rooftop shooting

by calling for a ban on rooftops.

There was also the question of whether the Secret Service

shouted out Donald Duck.

Yes.

Yes.

Um, President Biden has put politics aside and wishes Reagan a full recovery.

Yes.

Uh, Kaitlin Johnson says, that was a close one, America almost had two

presidential candidates with no brain.

Um, what else have we got here?

Yeah, that's um,

got anything else to say about it, gentlemen?

I just think it was only a matter of time before it happened.

You know, I'm not, you know, one of the things my brother said to me last

night, he was concerned that this had a, the attack came from the left.

You know, he said, had the right wing done it and all that sort of

stuff, we'd all be rightly to be able to be mortified that it happened.

But because the left did it and all that sort of stuff, you know, the Republicans

are just going to run and say, well, this is a, this is a Democrat conspiracy.

You know, they're one of, one of their people tried to kill us, you know.

Interesting.

The chat, Landon Hardbottom says that YouTube's censoring.

Apparently the word

president is being blocked by YouTube.

I don't think it's the spam filter.

The only thing I can think of is they've just stopped people discussing

it to try and calm things down.

Well, and, uh, John Simmons is being censored as

well by YouTube, he feels.

So

it's possibly that the, you know,

President.

Yeah.

I'll see if that comes out on the YouTube chat.

Obviously it comes out on our chat, but.

Yeah.

So an extraordinary event, really.

Um, an iconic photograph.

And I mean, Trump was already sort of a warmish favourite.

And I think it's even more likely that he's going to win.

And John Simmons says, still, it didn't come up.

Your comment about president didn't come up, Joe.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Okay.

Um, Maybe put some spaces or something in the word or, uh, some punctuation.

That's weird.

How do you know it's the word president, Joe?

Uh, cause, uh, John said he tried typing in and every time he

put the word president in any of his comments, he just got blocked.

That's weird.

Wow.

Wow.

Okay.

Um, all right.

Well, we can move on.

I was, um, I was reading, uh, let me just find it here.

Um, The Iron Heel by Jack London.

This was recommended by Watley.

Watley corresponds with us a lot and, um, uh, recommended this one and I found it,

a section of it to be quite interesting.

So, um, just in the lead up to this, um, another person on Twitter had this

thing, What do Western Marxists get wrong?

And, um, what do they get wrong about Marxism?

And she reckons that Marxism in the West is often perceived as a moral

ideology focused on achieving equality.

of the classes, I guess.

But in the Global South, Marxism is understood as a science used

to develop the productive forces.

And that's the aspect that I intend to talk about over the next 10 minutes.

So, Scott, did you get a chance to read this little Iron Heel excerpt at all?

No,

I haven't.

Okay, alright.

I

was

out with

Landon today, so I haven't looked at anything

for him.

Ah, okay, alright.

Is he there with you now, is he?

He's over at his place at Slade Point right now.

Ah, very good.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, um, so The Iron Heel by Jack London is a novel, kind of dystopian

novel, and um, reminds me a lot of The Grapes of Wrath, just in the sort

of, you know, Downtrodden, working class, it's all grim and it stays grim.

There's no real happy ending kind of thing to it.

But, um, and it's also a little bit, unfortunately, it reads a little

bit, bit like Ayn Rand in that the characters are just so exaggerated.

And, you know, the male heroes are just so manly and strong and whatnot.

It's all a bit over the top in that respect.

It did have one section in there where this guy who is this socialist

is confronting these oligarchs and he's, um, talking to them to

explain why the capitalist system has a, has an inherent fault.

And I'm just going to run through basically the story that he tells and, um.

It's sort of the inevitable breakdown of the capitalist system, which he

says he'll demonstrate by maths.

And he says, there's a shoe factory, the factory takes

leather, makes it into shoes.

So it takes 100 worth of leather, the leather goes through the

factory, comes out in the form of shoes, and let's say it's worth 200.

So what has happened?

100.

Has been added to the value of the leather, and that's been added because

of the capital and the machinery in the factory and the labour of the workers.

So, um, by joint effort of capital and labour, 100 has turned into 200 of value.

And having produced this extra 100, he says, let's now proceed to divide it.

So, capital, for example, takes 50 as its share, and Labor

gets in wages 50 as its share.

And you could argue about the sort of split up, whether it's 60 or whatever,

but at some point you've got to acknowledge that of that extra 100,

capital takes some and Labor Takes Some.

So he just goes for a 50 50 split to simplify things.

And he says, Now suppose that Labor, the workers, having received their

50, wanted to buy all of the shoes.

They could only buy 50 worth.

Because that's the wages they've got.

The maximum they could possibly purchase would be 50 worth.

So there's 50 worth.

worth of value of shoes that the workers can't buy.

And he says that happens in factories and workplaces all over the country.

So if you're taking, um, uh, motor vehicle manufacturing or other industrial,

um, other capitalist, any capitalist enterprise where they're creating value,

the workers will never be able to buy all of the value that they've produced.

In conjunction with capital.

So, uh, what does he say here?

Um, if you looked at the total of all the factories, and he said,

let's take for round figures, The production in wealth of the United

States in one year is 4 billion.

Labor has received in wages during that period 2 billion.

Capital gets 2 billion.

How much can they buy back?

2 billion.

So Labor can only consume 2 billion worth.

There's still 2 billion worth unaccounted for, which Labor can't buy.

It just doesn't have the wages.

Scott, any arguments with that so far?

No, that makes perfect sense, yeah.

Hmm.

So, 2 billion is left to capital.

Does capital consume all of its 2 billion?

It can't.

No.

And, um, so, um, what has to happen is, labour can't consume it,

because it's spent all of its wages.

Capital can't consume all of it.

So, what do they have to do with it?

It has to be sold abroad.

So, because of this balance arises our need for a foreign market.

It has to be sold abroad.

There's no other way of getting rid of it.

And that unconsumed surplus Sold abroad becomes what we call our

favourable balance of trade.

So, he then goes on to say that the United States is a capitalist country,

it's developed its resources according to the capitalist system of industry, it's

got an unconsumed surplus, it's got to get rid of it, it gets rid of it abroad.

And that's true for every other capital industrial country,

uh, with developed resources.

Every one of them has got an unconsumed surplus that it's got to get rid of.

So, um, let me just shortcut here, um, so amongst the industrial

capitalised countries, they can't just get rid of it amongst themselves.

They've got to sell it to undeveloped countries and, uh, suppose that

the United States disposes of its surplus to a country like Brazil.

What does the United States get in return?

Well, it might get gold, securities, bonds, eventually might get, um, ownership

of local infrastructure, et cetera.

Eventually, if Brazil became capitalized and industrialized, and

it also had a surplus, You would also then have to try and get rid

of that surplus somewhere else.

So, um, the United States and Brazil would both seek other countries

with undeveloped resources in order to unload the surpluses on them.

Um, so we've basically got a planet that's only so large.

There are only so many countries in the world.

What will happen when every country in the world, down to the smallest

and last, with a surplus on its hands?

Stan's confronting every other country with surpluses in their hands.

And, uh, and that was basically described as Karl Marx's doctrine

of surplus value elaborated.

And I found that a really interesting exercise.

It assumes you're solely a secondary industry country.

And you've got to wonder what the breakdown is in primary and tertiary

industries, how they affect that.

Well if they're capitalist, and capital takes a share of the surplus,

and the labour therefore can't afford to buy all of the surplus, the surplus

value, there will be excess value that has to be, has to end up somewhere.

Yeah, um, it was more about

services.

Even that in a, if capital takes some of it, like I can remember, Actually,

in the law, where, um, partners in mid size law firms who are just made partner

couldn't afford themselves, in the sense that they didn't have enough money, if

they needed to, to employ someone like themselves to give advice, because they

were too expensive even for themselves.

Like, um, So, I think it translates into the service industry, wherever there's

capital that's just taking a share of the surplus and therefore the, um,

the labour component doesn't get it.

I mean, your ordinary mum and dad business is not a capitalist business.

It's, it's total surplus value just goes to the owners who spend it.

Um, that, that's not capitalism, but um, you know, the

interesting part of all that was

I don't Actually, I think it is capitalism because that's

the reason they get out of bed in the morning is to get their money.

Uh, they're essentially wager They're essentially earning a wage

Yeah, but they're essentially, they're

earning a wage by doing something that someone else doesn't

want to do for themselves, so they're getting paid to do that.

But that's

not Capital is where you can just sit on unearned

arse and earn money from your money.

Rolls in from sitting there and just holding something.

And most small businesses are not capitalist in that sense.

So the sort of the really important idea of all this was that, um,

then I was listening to a podcast.

Let me move on to the next part then, which was, um, Well, Radhika Desai

was on, um, Geopolitical Economy.

She's written a book, Capitalism, Coronavirus and War, and um, it

goes into this, that capitalism generates surplus value.

That's gotta be forced onto foreign countries, whether they like it or not.

I'm sort of paraphrasing her book.

I'm giving my own sort of Spin on this the way the book reads.

So bear with me.

Some of this might be my own words.

Some of it might be hers.

It's a mixture of both.

So if you accept the position that, that, um, workers can't buy all of the surplus

value, therefore that surplus value has to find a home somewhere, which has to be

a foreign country, then, um, capitalism.

needs imperialism because it's forced onto these foreign countries

whether they like it or not.

And, um, and in her book, she's talking about the progression

from neoclassical economics.

Which emphasise free markets, and um, and that emerged just as capitalism

was entering a monopoly phase.

And she says that the left accepted capitalism as the only

model, and argued only for a nice capitalism, without understanding

that capitalism needs imperialism.

So the left looked at the wealth of western countries, And attributed

it to industrial capitalism rather than imperial theft.

So what we're saying there is, um, if you accept that that

surplus value argument is correct.

And it has to go to foreign countries, then capitalists will make sure

it goes to those foreign countries whether they like it or not.

So capitalism needs imperialism, and if you're looking for a nice capitalism

that doesn't force imperialism, it can't happen because you'll be left

with all of this unused surplus.

Um, so just looking at the history of sort of economics.

There was an oversupply, a crisis of oversupply and poor demand,

so surplus value in the late 70s.

This was fixed by cheap money, deregulation and

privatising public assets.

This turbocharged the Western finance sector at the expense of

the Western productive industrial sector, which led to price bubbles.

The financial crisis and COVID pandemic threatened the bubbles.

More cheap money was allowed.

That was used for share buybacks, to prop up stock prices.

And now with BRICS and China's Belt and Road, many countries are rejecting.

The sort of neo liberal financialised capitalism centred on the USA and

she argues that capitalism has really reached a tipping point,

so I think there's a lot to that.

That there's this surplus value, it's gotta find a home, it's been

forced on all these other countries, now they don't have to swallow it.

And, um, and I think, um, I think she's right, that sort of capitalism

has reached a tipping point.

So, here's my own thought, um, if you could run a closed capitalist system, i.

e.

you're not relying on forcing the surplus to be rammed down

the throats of foreign countries.

Um, you could possibly do it if the workers could spend wages

and social security and if, um, capital's excess value was taxed

or controlled sufficiently.

So basically, if you could have a system where capital, capitalists couldn't retain

much of the excess value and that most.

Well, close to nearly all of it went back to the workers.

You could run a closed system.

And arguably, that's what China's doing.

Because China is, um, held onto the key parts of the

economy of banking and finance.

It's held onto transport and infrastructure, the ownership of all

those things, where there's potential for monopoly, the state owns it.

So the, the areas that are being privatised in the Chinese economy, um, are

areas where there's massive competition.

Where there's multiple firms competing in a dog eat dog fashion.

And because of that hard, free market, um, competition, that competition

eats away at the capital that the capitalists, or the surplus value

that the capitalists can hang on to, and more of it goes back to labour.

So there's less held, The, um, in the companies.

That's why a lot of the Chinese companies, even the most successful

ones, BYD, the battery car manufacturer and others, they're not nearly have

the same share price as Western companies of a similar type.

And it's because they're not running in.

In near, sort of, um, monopoly situations, and their competition

is not allowing Capital to keep a hold of a lot of that excess value.

So,

sound compelling, Scott?

I've got to read it.

You know, I've got to read it to understand it.

But, um, yeah, you haven't actually You haven't seen anything

that's got my hackles up, so, you know, I've got to read it.

Yeah, I found it very interesting, the, just the idea that the surplus

had to be forced on outside countries because it's the only place it could go.

Yeah, um.

You've got Landon Hardbottom's poem.

This Landon say,

uh, Oh capitalism, some say you are a prison, but to them I do not listen.

Some say you have, yeah, yeah, yes, you did.

I can't read that one out, Landon, I'll be, I'll put it in the audio version.

Yeah.

Um, do you think that's chat GPT generated

is is what?

Chat GPT generated a poem?

No, he actually wrote it.

He, he actually

wrote, yeah, that's from one of his clips.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Mm.

John's GP t's

quite good at writing poems.

Yeah.

No, that, that was a Len and hard bottom one.

I'll, I'll put that in the audio at the end if I Okay.

Yeah.

I've got it there.

Yeah.

John Salmon says, what other ways can we stream to you

other than YouTube or Facebook?

Twitch would be the one.

I'm sure they don't, they wouldn't be into censoring us over there on Twitch, Joe?

I have no idea.

Yeah, so, um, what else have I got on this topic?

Um, uh,

yeah, let me just get this part here.

Um, to truly comprehend what's going on.

One of course needs to consult Karl Marx and Das Kapital which declared

that, people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and

diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or

in some contrivance to raise prices.

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords,

like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent.

Even for its natural produce.

And the writer of this article goes, ha, gotcha.

That wasn't, um, Karl Marx.

It was Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations.

What people don't recognise, Scott, is that Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations

was keenly aware of the problems of imperfect markets and monopoly power.

And how that was just ruined the whole idea of, um, of an efficient system.

I know he was quite the visionary.

Mm-Hmm.

Are you aware of the Febu cartel?

Febu cartel?

No.

Mm-Hmm.

No.

It was cartel of light bulb manufacturers in the 1930s.

Yes.

This, this rings a bell.

Yeah, that conspired to reduce the average lifespan of a lightbulb, so as to,

and they agreed that no lightbulb would last more than so many thousand hours, so

that they basically could continue selling lightbulbs to their, um, Consumers.

Rather than one of them go off and develop one that had five times the

lifespan and their profits would diminish.

So this is where I think China is figuring it out, in that they're

not allowing monopoly power, um, which the West has allowed in key industries.

And they are allowing, they are allowing markets to work.

In areas where there will be genuine competition and the result.

Problem with, um, selling off of the public assets was that

we sold off natural monopolies.

Yes.

Which has allowed, uh, companies basically to sweat those assets, provide

poor service, Create huge profits.

And then turn them over to the government because the government

can't afford for them to collapse.

Yep.

So.

For sure.

Um, so yeah.

So that's where they've got, got it figured out.

There's an article in the show notes that talks about the, Chinese, uh,

electric vehicle market, how there's all these manufacturers, it's a, it's

a tough competitive environment and the result is that, um, prices, uh,

people are getting really good value cars in China at a great price and

the actual car companies themselves are not accumulating massive profits.

Have you seen the newspaper articles about the, um, what's

Elon Musk's, the Tesla's?

Right.

Sitting apparently in the bond yards over here because nobody's buying them.

Really?

Because the BYD's are so much cheaper.

I mean, apparently Tesla slashed prices.

000 off the price of their vehicles and people still aren't buying them.

So he used to joke and laugh at people who suggested that

the Chinese might provide, um, competitive electric vehicles.

Yeah.

He just sort of scoffed at the idea.

Well, in Europe, that's what they're mostly driving

is Chinese electric vehicles.

You know, they're not really buying the Teslas.

You know, it's the only, The only concern I have is that, um, every electric

vehicle's got to talk to its home base and that sort of stuff every now and again.

So if China decided to actually get involved in a scrap with us, they could

turn all those vehicles off immediately.

You know?

Can they?

Yeah.

Mm.

They can.

But not just electric vehicles.

Petrol vehicles now all phone home.

I've got a friend who works in Germany on the CAN bus, which is

the vehicle communication system.

And he writes the software for a router that translates in

between all the different modules.

And everything, and I mean literally everything, you want to turn

on, you press the all in one car entertainment system, info system.

www.

microsoft.

com Any button, any menu selection you make, it phones home back to

BMW, Audi, Mercedes, whoever, to say this is my subscriber number, do

they have access to this, have they purchased this module in my software?

Right.

I remember one of those modules was the heat warmer in your seat.

Yeah,

the heat warmer for the seats, the front seats.

That was actually on a subscription model on some of the cars.

Yes.

Yes.

Are you going to turn the seat warmer on in a minute?

I'll just check with you if I need to.

So

my friend was saying that they had, um, I can't remember

what manufacturer's vehicle in their workshop to do some testing.

Yeah.

And because their workshop was in the basement of the building and

it couldn't receive a satellite signal, um, and the battery ran

flat, I think, when they powered it back up, it couldn't phone home.

And because it couldn't phone home, it refused to start.

Right, there we go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um,

It's a scary thought that all of these cars are so, um, automated,

um, that effectively, you know, it used to be you could get a car, it

runs 50, 100 years, as long as you can find the parts, it's not a problem.

But all of these are reliant on a computer at the back end to say, yes, you

can do this and no, you can't do that.

And when the manufacturer decides that they're not going to run the

computer in the back end anymore.

It's like video games that all phone home across the internet.

Well, I guess it's like an Apple phone where they basically over time

say this particular model, uh, Apple phone, we just won't support any more.

There'll be no further software updates and it just won't work in

a few, you know, in a year or two by the time other changes are made.

They,

they do work.

I wouldn't connect one to the internet though.

Right.

It wouldn't connect what to the internet

a and any device that is no longer getting software support like an iPhone

three or four or something.

Yeah, right.

Be because there are known bugs in it, because over time people

discover more and more problems

and it just wouldn't accept current apps, for example.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

So it might work as a phone, but rather it won't have

all the functionality you'd expect.

Well, and uh, well, don't forget the mobile phone systems

have changed over time, so a knife.

A second generation mobile phone will no longer work on the network anyway.

There we go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What else did I want to say here?

Some of the main ones actually.

Donald Trump, surplus value, the idea that, um, capitalism needs imperialism

and, um, And, uh, that surplus value in China, you know, in the West, we've

allowed monopolies and some of these big corporations have this monopoly

power that allows the capitalist to keep a lot of surplus value.

In China, they have not allowed that to happen with monopoly

situations and, um, where there's a real strong competitive market.

Capital can't keep that surplus value.

It's too competitive to, to keep it going.

Hmm.

Gentlemen, got anything else you want to say?

I

don't know if we want to Were you aware of the other

Big US Supreme Court ruling.

No, Joe, I Which was the Exxon deference.

Exxon deference.

Yeah, I mean, effectively it said that where a law was ambiguous or

didn't cover all cases, that the executive body had the right to decide

what the meaning of the intent was.

Right.

So if a law said that.

Um, pollution needed to be reduced, then it would be down to the EPA to

decide what was pollution and how much it needed to be reduced, if the

law didn't specifically spell it out.

Um, this has been overturned by the Supreme Court, which says, no, no,

no, no, it's not down to the executive government, uh, it's down to the

judiciary to make this decision.

And therefore, individual judges will be making decisions.

Scientific decisions as to what the meaning of the law was.

Wow.

Um, basically this is a play by a big industry to have their pet

judges rule in their favour to allow them to get away with whatever

loopholes they can find in the law.

Unless, uh, unless the laws are written down to the specific minute detail with

every I dotted and every T crossed.

And then a judge will be able to find in favor of private corporations.

If this guy gets another four years

Exactly.

Like I said, the problem is not Trump.

The problem is now that the Supreme Court is in there.

They are doing everything to whittle away at any rights that humans have.

The Supreme Court was basically stacked by Donald Trump.

So I just think to myself, it is all Trump's fault.

But you know No,

no, it's Moscow

Mitch

as

well.

Yeah, I know.

But they're all, they're all, they're all responsible for it.

You know, the United States is the world's oldest democracy.

But, it's just getting whittled away.

It's getting down to the point that there is not going to be a democracy over there.

It's not a democracy now.

Oh, it's not a democracy now, but it's just one of those things.

It was the oldest democracy on the planet.

Now it's not.

Was it?

Yeah, he was the oldest.

Uh, I think the Isle of Man would disagree with that.

Okay.

Well, who's the Isle of Man?

Uh, it's got the longest running parliament in the world.

Right.

Okay.

But I mean, it wasn't just the Supreme Court that Trump stacked.

It was a whole bunch of federal judges as well.

So he'll have another four years of further stacking of those courts.

It's one of those things, um, you know, I've been listening

to a lot of podcasts where they're talking about the future of the United

States with, you know, Project 2025.

I was about to say 2025.

You know, it's the only conclusion that you can, some do is

that they're setting up, they're setting up to become the Republic of Gilead.

Yes.

You know, which it honestly would not surprise me

if they actually did do that.

So this 2025.

Is a sort of a wishlist and a sort of a plan by a bunch of Heritage

Foundation and other right wing think tanks about, right, last time we

were mucking around with Trump, we really didn't know what we were doing.

And we allowed the, um, sort of the public service to thwart us in our endeavors, but

this time they're going to hit the ground running and they've got a whole bunch

of Plans they're going to implement for a, basically a Christian fascist state.

It seemed like, like some pretty extreme stuff.

Yeah,

Trump has denied all knowledge, but apparently he's already said

that he's going to, um, appoint one of the 2025 members, leaders as some

key government, um, position, uh, and he was in bed with them last time.

He knows full well who they are.

He knows full well their plans.

Yeah, it is shaping up as a Gilead type situation.

It is, you know, they've already moved on abortion.

You know, they're talking about birth control for Christ's sake.

You know, now that is something that I never honestly thought would anyone

would actually have an objection to.

We're really going to end up with, with what we've talked about

before, with a split of the sort of.

West coast of, of California.

Well, the west and

east coast and then the flyover

states.

And then on the other side of New York and somehow the union breaks up

as the empire collapses, who can, who keeps control of the nuclear weapons

and the military is the big question.

That is the biggest concern is because you cannot have the

nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Republic of Gilead.

Did you see the, um, uh, apparently some.

Supreme Court, um, appointee, or maybe it was one of the federal judges, and

they were being grilled by the Senate, and they were asked, what do you think

about Brown versus the Board of Education, and they refused to respond on that.

Now this was the one that allowed desegregated schools, so they

refused to answer the question as to whether they thought schools

should or shouldn't be segregated.

Mm.

So having basically said, and don't forget, uh, there were

at least three of the justices that were asked about, um, Roe v.

Wade, and they all said it was settled law, and as far as they were

concerned it should stay settled law, and then they promptly overturned it.

So they're now refusing to talk about, uh, segregated schools.

The only one that they can't touch is, uh, Loving versus

Virginia, which of course is, um,

Mixed marriages.

Mixed marriages, yes.

And that's because Clarence Thomas is in a mixed marriage.

Yes,

yes.

So that's the only one that they've ruled out overturning.

When will this shambles be recognised by the general public?

Public, I wonder.

Well, a lot of them think it's great.

In America, I guess.

I saw an article, um, of people who are moving to the, um, to Russia

because it's like 1950s USA, you know, where women knew their place.

Right.

Women and gays knew their place.

Really?

Who's, who's moving to Russia?

From where?

Um, Central US.

I, I presume white middle class.

Americans are moving to Russia for the, for the traditional family values.

Yeah, basically.

You'll have to find me some information on that.

I just, it was a news article I saw.

I was like, I couldn't believe it, but yeah, apparently it's true.

Yep.

Ah,

dear.

I think things can happen and roll on pretty quickly.

I think when I say like nothing happens for decades and then it all happens

in a week or something like that.

So, certainly.

If that bullet had hit Trump, that would have been one of those.

events that triggered, you know, a decade of history in a matter of a few weeks.

And he's still triggering stuff.

He's accelerating the demise or the apparent demise.

Oh my goodness me, it's just a shambles and

we sit back and watch it develop and hope they don't blow the rest of us up.

Yeah, which actually could actually happen.

I wonder what's happening in the corridors of power in places like China.

And they're just looking at this and thinking, how do we control

these guys when they collapse into some dystopian nightmare?

How do we, I wonder what their plans are for dealing with it?

I

don't know.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Right.

Anyway.

Okay.

Well, there's an hour.

Trump, assassination, surplus value.

That was the episode for you.

We will be back next week.

Look for, um, look for us on Twitch if you're getting blocked on the other ones.

Yeah,

it's the underscore IFVG underscore podcast.

Yep.

Um, Alison reckons if Trump had been decommissioned and replaced,

that replacement would get more votes than Trump would have.

Yep.

Possibly.

It's like Nikki Haley said, she said the first party that gets rid

of their octogenarian candidates is going to, is going to wipe

the floor with the other one.

You know, and then I don't know much about her other than she's a

Republican, but that was an eminently sensible thing for anyone to say.

Probably.

They would have got double.

They would have got the benefit of our hero Trump was killed and we're

going to support the Republicans, you know, in, to honour his name.

And it would have been, we've got somebody younger.

So that's good.

Um, so.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

No, good Lord no.

Yeah.

Good God no.

Righto.

It's all a shambles.

Uh, we'll be back next week.

We'll talk to you then.

Bye for now.

And it's a good night from me.

And it's a good night from him.

Bye.

Bye.

What's that, my love?

What am I doing?

Well, I'm going to write some love poetry.

Well, of course I'll let you read it when I'm finished.

Ahem.

Oh, capitalism.

Some say you are a prison.

But to them I do not listen.

Some say you have put millions in the ground.

But to But to that I say, they were mostly brown.

In you there is no gloom, as people consume, and the economy

booms, profits are maximized.

And to no one's surprise, those of us on top get to keep the lot.

Well Landon, there's one for the ages.