IS success a measure?
A measure, of success?
the markets are all broken
that's why the world's a mess
But which system beckons
from far beyond the veil
bringing us together
around a round of ale
are the markets working?
if so, why am I stressed?
I am The People's Bayonet
and THIS is The Problem
What do we define as success, my friends?
What has succeeded and what has failed, my confidants?What 
has succeeded and what has failed, my confidants?
Have we had a system
that succeeded yet,
in history, my loves?
And has the system around us
failed us, now, my comrades?
Let us look at the failures of other nations
and contrast them with our own.
there's a frightening amount of data
on our healthcare system
But data without context are inconsequential.
we need Context.
In the latest data I can find from the
World Health Organization, the socialist
country known as The Republic of Cuba
spends a whopping 2500 bucks a year
on each person
...in public spending...
that's 11-12% of GDP on public health spending
which is WAY higher than the US' 8%
the US has another 8% on private spending,
so at least 16%
though, I can't seem to find any numbers on private 
healthcare spending in Cuba
wonder why that might be.
Also, you don't necessarily get
better care when you spend more money
for example on this principle,
store-brand cereal is just as good as name-brand
pregabalin is just as good as Lyrica
it turns out, just charging more without 
improving service is entirely possible
and therefore, prevalent.
There are diminishing returns on
cost-per-patient versus quality of care
as it is suggested by the evidence:
"treatment intensity, and not differences
in quality reflected in prices"
has the greatest impact on quality of care
Treatment intensity is basically a measure
of how frequently a patient is seen by a doctor
and if preventative care is aggressively pursued.
If your doctor sees you,
checks your blood pressure
and sends you out the door with some
prescription, to return in 3 or 6 months
your needs are regularly not met and
frequently get worse before you can see the doctor
This is why mortality rates in rich people hospitals are 
only marginally lower than the general public's
The only real effect this has on the quality of care is that
 any health care is essentially unaffordable without 
insurance
...something treated as a commodity
At least in how it's priced, and until the ACA
how it was deniable to the people who
seriously needed it because they have something like
I dunno
I dunno, a heritable disease?
I dunno, a heritable disease? Like
I dunno, a heritable disease? Like Asthma?
I dunno, a heritable disease? Like Asthma?
or Crones?
I dunno, a heritable disease? Like Asthma?
or Crones? or
I dunno, a heritable disease? Like Asthma?
or Crones? or like
or like, any mental condition
other than 100% clear?
And we multiply the problem when
we consider that children are also
subject to this free market system
so if their parents can't afford insurance,
they don't get healthcare because
they can't afford it either.
You know, for kids?
CHIP is a good option for the kids and the teens,
but that's in danger of being dismantled
by republicans in congress
Speaking of commodity, mental healthcare is treated as 
shameful, and as such is less profitable to set up a 
practice for
This leads to inadequate care, and the
lack of regulation has in-turn inspired
a lot of quackery
in a vicious cycle that has driven pill mills and mistrust, 
leading to less people getting adequate care, etc etc
this trends towards demonizing
people with mental health issues
further stigmatizing mental health as a whole
[Keith Olbermann:]
"Trump is indeed effing crazy
his brain does not work correctly
there is a myriad of possible explanations
and we have hit them all here
congenital disease, drug use
any of a dozen post-concussion traumas
alzheimers, senility, lack of common sense
lack of awareness of things in the world besides himself
and endless specific emotional or
psychological or intellectual incapacities
or all of these things at the same time"
GOD you're a dick.
Dental care is also treated as a
commodity, and I know that personally, because
I have medicare because I'm disabled as fuck,
and I'm having to look into cheap dental care because 
medicare doesn't provide dental insurance.
yeah.
yeah.
it's bad.
A lot of this is the result of a shame-driven
culture around medical issues for which
I can't, for the life of me, discern the purpose
But as a result of this insurance-based system,
drugs and procedures are significantly
more expensive here than they are just
to the north of us and all around the world
people like, again, Martin Shkreli take the opportunity to 
absolutely explode the price of something
to get the most money out of insurance companies
while leaving the people who tend to use that medication
(hint hint, it's marginalized people with not much money)
(hint hint, it's marginalized people with not much money)
unable to pay for life-saving medication.
This is the same issue with the Epi-Pen and Insulin,
which are both proprietary drugs
and do not have generics available as a result of our
patent system and our medical certification system
And if, God forbid, you have a disability,
and you're having trouble getting on
disability or a job with benefits
your medical bills will pile up until your debt kills you.
To go back to Cuba, a socialist country
we can see that the healthcare provided to the people is not
 provided by any greedy corporations, but by the government.
This healthcare tends to be of a higher quality, as 
preventative care and intensity of care are prioritized
over profit incentives and expensive and/or invasive 
procedures
If you feel sick, see a doctor
if you break something, see a doctor
if you are in pain, see a doctor
and none if it is mediated by a private sector trying to 
make a buck rather than heal the sick
I think it would be good if we here in the US started to 
work towards implementing this kind of system
at the very least, initiatives like
Medicare for All are good steps
but will only really be universal healthcare if we get rid 
of private insu-
O- okay.
Let's step back and move on.
We wouldn't want the accusation of
being a communist here, right?
that would be-
that would be-
Walter: OVER THE LINE!
Alongside Freedom, one of the prides of
our land is our security in our homes.
we have a right to privacy and we're not gonna
get stopped unless we've done something wrong.
well...
In 2013, now former NSA director Michael Hayden
got up in front of the White House Press Pool and 
denied that "probable cause" was a part of the 4th 
amendment, to quote...
[- Hayden, + Reporter]
+ The measure is 'Probable Cause' I believe
- The amendment says
'unreasonable search and seizure'
+ But does it not say 'prob-
- No!
[Keith Olbermann:]
Well, maybe they have a different
constitution over there at the NSA.
YOU AGAIN!? WHAT-
Whatever.
Our government doesn't like due process any more than the 
vigilantes charged with the crime of not following due 
process do...
and this is the kind of thing the
Soviets were allegedly doing
but we never turned a mirror to ourselves and the countless 
violations of privacy we commit here.
The USA PATRIOT act was rushed into law after 9/11 and has 
created some of the worst of these violations
Also, look at... this is...
this whole thing is a fucking acrony-
when it was signed into law, the simultaneous establishment 
of Homeland Security ensured its perpetuation
and as a result, we have some agencies for which we must 
thank the republican lawmakers who created it
First and foremost, the TSA 
We hate the TSA in this country.
we think it's a waste of time.
we think it's absurd the things we have to
throw away just to go a few states over by air.
what's wrong with this bottle of water I just bought RIGHT 
over there, huh?
WHAT AM I GONNA DO WITH A BOTTLE OF WATER, HUH!?
FUCKIN' DROWN THE PILOT!?
[Record Scratch, Freeze Frame, yup that's me]
In a talk by security expert Bruce Schneier,
who coined the term "security theatre"
he talks about the kinda terrible heuristics
we use to assess risk and security
As he says:
There's an inherent problem with Low-Probability events
If, for example, terrorism almost never happens...
It's really hard to judge the efficacy of
counter-terrorist measures
I mean, this is why you know, you keep sacrificing virgins
and why your unicorn defenses are workin' just great
There just aren't enough examples of failures
we had a shoe bomber once
ONCE.
and we suddenly had to remove our shoes
every time we wanted to go anywhere by air.
how many shoe bombers have been
stopped at the gates by this measure?
iunno
how many shoe bombers have gotten through?
well...
well, our unicorn defenses have held true so far,
might as well throw another virgin on the fire
the only references I can find to it are the first incident
and then a Qatari diplomat being accused
of making a shoe bomb joke on a plane
[Reporter:] Muhammad al Madadi is described as third
secretary to the Qatari embassy in washington.
Officials say al Madadi at some point
left his first class seat, and went to the
plane's bathroom to apparently smoke a cigarette.
When he emerged, two air marshals, also in first class, 
stopped him and sat with him for the remainder of the 
flight.
Officials say it was while he was seated that he then 
reportedly made a joke or a wise-crack about trying to light
 his shoes on fire.
An apparent reference to the 2001
so-called "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reed,
and that set off alarm bells with the air marshals.
What were you THINKING, dude!?
The next agency for which we have to thank
the USA PATRIOT act is ICE (Immigrations and Customs 
Enforcement)
ICE has been around for roughly about
18 years now, it can smoke, good work guys
and it's currently being treated as a long-standing
tradition of our police state, undeserving of scrutiny
We are also under a surveillance state,
though not necessarily in the same capacity.
Here on the internet, your metrics, your data, your search 
history, purchase history, and browsing history
are all collected on a mass scale by
various companies like Facebook
and youtube
Most big telecoms companies have come under fire for signing
 agreements with law enforcement to sell their users data
Regardless of if it's for loyalty checks or loyalty rewards,
our loyalties are being recorded all the time
That sounds familiar, doesn't it?
like the gestapo.
or the Soviet Police
I'm sure that's just a coincidence though.
But let's say that's unimportant.
so what, the police state's gonna police state
and capitalism's gotta capitalism right?
Well, I think we should talk about food
Many communities in the USA have what many would call
"a lack of sufficient nutrition
for sustaining a healthy life"
and what I would call "borderline famine"
In most of these communities,
there are few if any fresh food options
Most food in these communities is consumed from a box or a 
can
pre-processed and stuffed full of corn syrup to make up for 
calories lost in processing
Point to starvation in one socialist country,
and I'll point you to a city in america with similar 
starvation
and if not, I'll point to hundreds of capitalist communities
 across the globe
that don't even have the utopian levels of starvation we 
have in the united states
The main issue is people not being able to afford food, 
however.
There are food banks and soup kitchens
in many parts of the country,
 but the dreaded "bread lines" of supposedly Soviet origin
are still rampant here in the united states.
I'm in georgia, there are like, a thousand churches
per square 
I'm in georgia, there are like, a thousand churches
per square meter here?
so I somewhat frequently go out and notice a "free bread!" 
sign out front and a line pouring out the door
We may pretend like starvation is a "third world" problem,
but it's rampant here, and it's entirely preventable.
the problem isn't supply, but distribution, provision
which is something we can do something about today
check out "food not bombs" for more information on that, by 
the way
I recently made a scambaiting video in which I discuss an 
upside-down market version of a grocery store
 but there are much more realistic plans out there.
It's not like I ever got the 18 million.
annnnnnyway
I discussed this in my first video,
but it's certainly worth circling back to
there's a serious problem we have here in the US,
and its name is "wage labor"
Currently, the only way to eat is to have money, and the 
only way to have money is to work
and the only way to find work is... big question mark.
"The Gig Economy" is a term you'll likely have heard going 
around to describe having no career opportunities
Basically, you're at the whim of the free labor market, 
which is a bit more telling by its name than most of its 
proponents would likely admit 
Hiring practices are highly race and gender dependent
using women's names for thousands of
administrative assistant and retail sales jobs,
men's names for custodian and security guard
he also varied the age.
the results were dramatically different by age,
but just among the women
Wages are highly race and gender dependent
Benefits are highly race and gender dependent as well as 
being highly dependent on whether or not you have a 
disability of any sort
and if you don't fit "able-bodied white man"
then oh well, you just get to eat less I guess.
oh right, and in many states,
if you don't fit society's norms in any other way,
you're at the whim of how progressive your employer is
and even then, they could decide they're done
with your queer ass and toss you out for that
with little legal repercussion if any
do we have stats on minority rights in socialist states?
yes?
yes?
also bad?
yes?
also bad?
well.
nobody's perfect, right?
whatever.
Also, if you're gay or trans or sufficiently intersex,
you can be evicted or denied lodging/housing
and you'll have to live on the streets, soooo,
how about the rights of homeless people then?
welll...
*pained intake of breath*
All across capitalist countries, the scourge of
"unpleasant design" as discussed in the book of the
same name by Selena and Gordon Salvic, runs rampant
we have architecturally designed homelessness
further into the margins of cities with spikes
and leaning benches and whatever the hell THIS thing is
And then there's this asshole
how about just buy a home? or rent it,
that seems like a reasonable thing to do
well, the problem is known as Gentrification
I've had it argued to me that Gentrification
doesn't happen by some neoliberal grifter,
so I think I'm going to need to define it
Got it?
There's a single study that is cited to denegrate the idea 
of gentrification existing
it has been shown to be accurate for the time it covered, in
 large part
the problem is that the study stopped data collection
in 1999, and it's been 20 years since then,
so we can't just apply it to today
it would be like saying the housing market
is booming in 2009
Doing so would be incredibly disingenuous
Also, even back then, there was a
seriously large homeless population
Right now, services like AirBnB are
turbo-charging gentrification's worst effects
by allowing landlords to evict their tenants in favor of 
higher-profit "hotel" services
This is thankfully becoming SLIGHTLY more regulated,
but it's not getting better any time soon.
[George Carlin:]
I know where we can build housing for the homeless:
Golf Courses.
Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods
Land that is currently being wasted on a
meaningless, mindless activity
engaged in primarily by white,
well-to-do, male businessmen
Who use the game to get together to make deals
to carve this country a little finer among themselves
Gotta love carlin, man. and really,
would THAT be so terrible?
a few fewer golf courses
and nobody's homeless?
I think that'd be just peachy, yeah?
Let's also talk about how weird it is that
we have a housing market with significant surplus
that has been gathering dust for years, far in excess of the
 number of homeless people.
The supply outstrips the demand by miles,
yet the prices continue to grow
Or we could just take those empty houses away
from the people who are keeping them empty
and give them to homeless people and families.
or rebuild in the location, put up public housing.
a bunch of apartments or something.
it would be better than nothing, that's for certain.
and much cheaper and easier to maintain than running a bunch
 of cops around shooing people off benches
and installing fucking spikes to keep people from
sleeping in the only places that are available
the USSR, which had a mandate of non-eviction...
and made homelessness a crime, which seems a bit weird
but they effectively eliminated homelessness up until it was
 dissolved and russia had adopted capitalism
at which point, homelessness rates skyrocketed
honestly, just having public housing
would be fantastic, to be honest
(wow, I really wrote that.)
right now, funding for public housing is being stripped
by republicans, leaving more homeless people
on the street, unable to pay for rent 
or god forbid buy a house
landlords are really the problem here,
they own so much land
and they charge a fortune for people to live
in what would otherwise be empty
perhaps we should start looking into reducing and 
eliminating landlo-
O-okay. Let's... step back... and move on.
"Communism" is not the...
it's not the only way this shakes out, right?
we're just talking about solutions to problems
we have right now in the real world,
and some socialist countries beat The Big Capitalism: USA
And that's all we're talking about.
I've heard just... too many times to count that
Socialism and Democracy, as base concepts, are incompatible
Let's see how capitalism is doing in that regard!
in 2017, we started a streak of years in which
we are no longer considered a full democracy,
but a "flawed democracy"
So, we're not in a brutal authoritarian regime,
but we're uhhh gettin' there.
But how, you may ask, did it suddenly become a non-democracy
 in 2017?
Well, it's not just Trump, this has been going on a while.
a rightward so called "drift in the Overton Window"
Democrats have been playing patty cakes
with the Republicans for decades upon decades
to the point that they're virtually hot-swappable
And for the most part, going by military standards at least,
 they have been
Now, about that rightward shift...
(I do hope that's right, on the screen, because it's my 
left...)
First thing I'd like to look at here is
our Gerrymandering problem.
Many people have covered this much better than I could, but
but we have districts in this country that are drawn
around party lines, and not around pure demographics
This essentially makes red and blue districts from
generally purple areas, and frequently
red districts out of blue districts
because that's a thing and isn't illegal
Perhaps we should make carving up
america into easier to digest chunks
specifically with the goal of having an electorate
that is in no way represented in the halls of power
a fuckin' crime?
public opinion and laws have drifted apart since time 
immemorial
In a study by Princeton (down below) it was shown that
public opinion has no effect on policy,
but only in the general public.
The curve actually holds true for rich people
so I guess, if you want your voices heard, just...
Become rich!
because money is speech!
capitalism! investment! returns!
Another thing we hear about in relation to Socialist 
countries
is that they censor anything that is out of the party line
which sure, did happen, but I have some real bad news if you
 live in good ol' capitalist USA
For the most part, unless you're giving to independently 
funded media, thanks for that by the way
you are probably watching and reading
mainstream news, owned by companies
I have more on that in the 2 other videos I did about
Mainstream and/or Liberal media,
so I'm keepin' this bit short
it's interesting watching my production value shoot through
the roof even though my budget has stayed roughly the same
seriously, thanks for that.
What does our dear and glorious leader
think of The Washington Post?
Fake news!
What does he think of fake news?
[Donald Trump:]
no, no, you know what? YOU'RE creating violence
by your question. you know. you are creating, you.
AND ALSO! A lot of the reporters are
creating violence by not writing The Truth
If The Media would write "Correctly" and write "Accurately"
and write "Fairly" you'd have a lot less violence in the 
country
Well, that's really nice to hear.
Saying that reporters are not telling the truth,
all reporters except for the State Media, Fox News,
are lying and creating danger, is in and of itself dangerous
[Reporter:]
who else has been calling the media The Enemy?
President Trump
[Trump:]
A few days ago I called the fake news
"the Enemy of the People" and they ARE
[Rally Attendee:]
y'know, CNN. fake news. MSNBC. y'know
That's really the Enemy of the People
that phone call still gives me the jibblies.
It's an attack on our freedom of press,
it's an attack on our freedom of speech,
it's an attack on the freedoms laid out in our constitution
but, more in the abstract:
what is a freedom and what is a liberty?
It might be one person's freedom to swing a sword
wildly around with no care for anyone's safety
but it would impede many peoples' liberty
to not fear for their lives and or get limbs lopped off
Perhaps, when we talk about things like
"Religious Freedom" we have to keep in mind
the liberty of those who are not fundamentalists
Because right now, you are free to be as
fundamentalist christian as you like, but many people
don't have the liberty of having their needs met
whether that be birth control, abortion, or like, if you 
have a baby but you're gay?
I mean, this is mostly just a continuation of a trend of 
business owners using their prejudice to bully minority 
groups out of the public eye
Do remember how run down the black water fountains are in 
pictures about the Jim Crow era,
 and please, I dare you, tell me you'd drink from one.
The fears are the same, the target has changed,
and we're still here pretending like refusing service
as a "right" as a "freedom" to choose your customers, 
instead of an impedance on the liberty of those of the land 
of liberty
How about we start treating the liberties of the people
around us as more important than the freedom
to condemn those people to
poverty, starvation, illness, and death?
That sounds like a pretty reasonable shift, to me.
But who knows, maybe I'm unreasonable?
Can I have even one criticism of the status quo
without being labeled a communist?
In conclusion, we have a few options going forward:
We can democratize the workplace,
perhaps through union membership originally
but the goal would be to remove the boss and just have the 
workers run and own the business instead of just run.
We can start up and support chapters of "Food Not Bombs"
as a form of direct action to help starving people.
We can start looking into publicizing housing,
or at least revitalizing the public housing system.
we MUST provide universal immutable healthcare
with a high focus on preventative care.
work on solutions to our climate impact.
maybe we should do something about capi-
NO!
NO!
I SAID N-
No! move, worm. push that dirt. dig that hole. get eaten by
early bird investors and boards of directors
find solace in your toil, in the ground, eating soil, so
move it, worm! push that mud, dig that hole
or rise! to the occasion, and do something
about the bird problem we seem to have
The way forward mustn't be through military action
the way forward mustn't be through state-ownership of the 
economy
the way forward mustn't be through reactive violence
the way forward must include us all
the way forward is "utopian."
Actually, Utopia is a political satire by Thomas More
and it depicts a society as mostly a
religiously progressive land of comfort
It's hotly debated among scholars whether or not
More was satirizing the catholic church
or their detractors, as the text doesn't make it clear
So, really, when people say "utopian"
they just mean that something seems unrealistic.
This is unrealistic!
Nobody's going to agree with that, you know.
I think it's fine to call something utopian
if nobody's going to agree with it, right?
NO.
It's an insidious term, a brain worm telling you a lie
a lie that THIS is the BEST we can get!
But, there is no shining beacon on the hill, it's a fantasy.
dangling the promise of paradise on earth
over a never ending pit of despair.
"upward mobility" is a myth.
you will always be as poor as you are
unless we do something about the rich.
the rich own the means of production
the rich own the representatives of the people's will
the rich own the avenues of government through lobbying
Actually, all we need to do is repeal the
Citizens United decision, get money out of politics! 
You see, we just have to make sure we're electing
the right people who represent our values
This is all a bit silly, just vote democrat!
NO!
These politicians can't do anything for us,
they aren't our saviors!
they ignore science in favor of feelings
oh it feels cold? it FEELS COLD!?
oh well throw out the consensus,
I guess global fucking warming isn't happening.
when the fire fighters debate over whether
water or gasoline will put out the fire,
it doesn't matter if it's your fault or mine, it's our 
responsibility to put out the fire and fire the fighters!
I mean, I think I can probably get on board with that,
but what are we going to tell the fine people at home?
They're probably wondering why I'm just
standing here arguing with the ceiling
I guess, just... don't buy this argument that
"socialism has never succeeded" for one moment.
Now, am I saying that any one Socialism is perfect?
Am I saying that all Capitalisms have failed?
No, it's just a measure.
A measure, of success.
Don't let the pundits fool you
with their claims of ten-D chess
The oceans are rising, the mighty are falling
and tomorrow's disasters are written
in the sands of yesterday's mistakes
The system in which we live
has crumbled all around us
the pints of ale have soured
the markets start to close
but we still have each other
and that could be enough
to bring us to a future
a future made with love
collectivize and activate
change the way we operate
join a union, champ the cause,
we must progress, and quick
bring our world back from the brink
of famine and of war
Please do leave feed-Back and com-Ments,
just don't be a dick. Luna, Sources, Patreon,
and please Subscribe for more!
This was inspired in large part by
""X Socialist Country Has Failed!" Is A Stupid Argument"
by Hakim here on youtube
And you should really go look into it
if you have the time to spare for a little education
(and now, a reading of some truly stunning scam spam)
someone?
the LAND OF SPECIFICS! I guess.
oooooh you know those cut-throat timber dealers.
oh boy.
WHAT?
What kind of wood IS THIS!?
oh god
oh that really got me
I did not expect that to get me
