The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley Democrats and Socialism

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This is the listening tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. On this episode, I'll have a chat with economic policy expert Doug Cardell about socialist economics and the value of things. But first.

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Not the headlines.

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Now that the federal government shutdown has ended, and I must say I'm disappointed that the phrase listening tube shutdown never caught on, we can now look back on what effect the ordeal might have moving forward. Certainly there are large effects that the legacy press will cover ad nauseum. But this is not the headlines, so I found a story that you might not have heard about, unless you live in Kansas. As the shutdown was turning a month old and SNAP benefits for millions of people were running out, attorneys general from across the country sued the Trump administration to keep the program funded. The Attorney General from Kansas wasn't one of them. This, despite the fact that the governor of Kansas ordered the AG to do so. The governor needed the federal government to fund assistance to 188,000 Kansans who rely on food stamps for nutrition. But the Attorney General denied the request from the governor, stating, if the governor wants to run for the office of Attorney General, she has the right to do so, but she will need to go to law school first. The laws of Kansas are crystal clear regarding who represents the state of Kansas in court and controls what legal positions are taken by the state of Kansas. And if that wasn't enough, the governor claims that she has supreme executive power as the head of the executive branch and is asking the Supreme Court of Kansas to confirm her authority to order the Attorney General to join the lawsuit against the Trump administration. Does any of this sound familiar? If you're inclined to support the governor of Kansas and her efforts to feed the needy in her state, that's very empathetic. You must care very much about the suffering of innocent people caught up in a web of political uncertainty, just like the air traffic controllers and multitudes of federal employees. We can debate whether or not people on assistance should get paid before people who are actually working, but that's not the subject here. The subject here is the power of the executive branch of the state of Kansas. And there's an irony here that I can't help but notice. The governor of Kansas, a Democrat, is suing to get the same executive powers every Democrat in the country, including her, is arguing that President Trump must not have. That's the power to tell the Attorney General who or what to pursue in the courts. Attorney General Pam Bondi is often accused of taking orders from Trump when it's supposed to be understood that the office of the AG is meant to be independent from the executive. It sounds from here that the governor of Kansas is asking for the state Supreme Court to grant her executive powers that she feels should be denied to the highest executive office in the land. She claims that this lawsuit against her own Attorney General will protect the constitutional powers of the office of the governor. Powers that, according to her press release, will defend Kansas against the Trump administration's unlawful federal overreach.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Bob didn't believe it.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Well, President Trump didn't cause the federal shutdown, nor did he reach into the pockets of anyone in Kansas to take away their money. Calling the actions of the Trump administration a federal overreach is literally a gubernatorial overreach. Calling it unlawful is simply hyperbole. It may all be a moot point now, but there is one thing about the Trump administration that no one can deny. We are getting a much clearer picture of the lines of demarcation between the branches of government. As President Trump tests the limits of the executive branch in Washington, D.C., and the Supreme Court rules on those limits or lack thereof, lawsuits like the one the Kansas governor filed against her state's attorney general will more clearly define the roles and responsibilities of state-level executive and judicial branches. But if the governor of Kansas wants the power to tell the attorney general what to file and who to charge and how to run the judicial branch of her state, then there shouldn't be any complaints when the President of the United States has the same executive power. Speaking of attorneys general, the Virginia voters elected one who openly promoted one of his political rivals to be given two bullets to the head, and that his children would die in their mother's arms, and that he would piss on the graves. This is the face of the new Democratic Party. They claim they're trying to protect democracy, but all they do when they lose is turn to violence. That's not democracy. That's terrorism. But that's today's Democrats. Either do what we say or will cause unrest with violent protests, violent rhetoric, and actual acts of violence like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, two assassination attempts on Donald Trump, support for violent terrorist groups like Hamas, and most recently, violence against attendees at a turning point rally on the campus of UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley, once known as the origin of the free speech movement, has now become an intolerant, violence-supporting socialist institution. Instigators there not only using violence, but also promoting it and celebrating it. They justify the violence by insisting they are at war with the Trump administration, knowing that the administration will follow the law when they don't. And the left will keep it up until someone on the right will retaliate. Then they can say, see, both sides do it.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

You can hang your hat on that.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Vote for Republicans, independents, libertarians. Vote for anybody but the violent, pouting Democrats and their partners and overlords, the social democrats. Those two political factions will do everything they can to consolidate power, deprive citizens of their freedoms, censure dissenters, and make people dependent on the government for everything. From food to movement to bank transactions. Democrats want to make you a slave of the government, just like they wanted blacks to remain slaves. That's why it was so easy for socialists to infiltrate their ranks. More on socialism later in the program when I speak with Dr. Doug Cardell.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

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This week in 1947, the Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-communist loyalty oath. This was post-World War II, and although the Russians were an ally against the Nazis, after the war, the U.S. and the Soviet Union knew they had competing systems of government. And it was important to prove to the rest of the world which was better. Russia did it by stifling dissent and eliminating people who disagreed with the communist doctrine. The United States did it by providing opportunity and promoting the American way through media. Motion pictures had a lot of clout in the media back then, as television was still in its infancy when it came to visual entertainment. People got their news from pre-feature presentation newsreels. Today we see commercials before the movie. So it was important for the reputation of the American system of government to have motion pictures promote it. That meant the combies had to go. It was all part of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which led to some Hollywood stars getting blacklisted and banished from the trade. Today's Screen Actors Guild is run as a socialist society. The few at the top of the pile are very wealthy, while the rest toil in whatever role or duty they're assigned, depending upon what value they might bring. It costs $3,000 a year to be a member, but that doesn't guarantee you'll get a job. So, what are the political views of the current Screen Actors Guild president? I wonder. I'm going to look that up.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it. You can't handle the truth.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

The SAG president today is a man who's vocally supportive of Democrat candidates and has worked for or campaigned for them as far back as John Carey. He supported Hillary, Kamala, and Joe too. Politics is and always will be an important part of movie making. Some of the scariest movies out there are the ones that promote ideologies that have been proven failures. Yet somehow Hollywood flips the script and presents it in a way that glorifies the collective over the individual, or the antagonist over the job creator. Back in 1947, when guild members were required to take an oath against communism, they had a much different kind of president than they do today. He was not only president of the Screen Actors Guild once, but twice. And later, the president of another very influential organization, as President Ronald Reagan of the United States of America.

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The Listening Tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

My guest today is an expert on economics and policy advisor. Dr. Doug Cardell has written a book called Why Socialism Struggles, Exposing the Economic Errors That Undermine Utopian Ideals? Doug spent some time in the listening tube from his home in Arizona. I thought it would be interesting to speak with you considering a socialist was just elected mayor of New York City. What was your initial reaction to the election of Mamdani?

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Well, uh concern, I guess. My biggest concern is not so much that he was elected as it was how he was elected. About 25% of New Yorkers eligible to vote voted in that election, and about half of them voted for him. So that means he was elected by 12.5% of New Yorkers. I'm very concerned that small minorities will be able to institute socialism nationwide or I mean worldwide. It's not just a US problem. It's a problem that's being pushed throughout the world and almost exclusively because people don't understand what socialism is and they don't understand what capitalism is.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Now, I I'm not a fan of hypotheticals, but I hear a lot of people telling uh everybody else what's going to happen in New York City now that a socialist has been elected mayor. As a journalist, I prefer to observe and report rather than try to predict what might happen. But is there anything history tells us about what will happen?

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Probably the day after he got elected. He's gonna find out that first of all, most of what he says he's gonna do, he's not gonna be able to do. Um mayor in New York City has a lot of limitations that he hasn't been acknowledging, and most of his plans are gonna require state and federal cooperation. And uh, as a matter of fact, I saw an interview this morning with uh Kathy Houchell. She's not gonna cooperate, at least not as far as the bus situation is concerned. He's gonna find out that even and even if he could get the cooperation he wants, the bottom line is socialism never works. It never has, it never will. It's it's it's an impossibility because a lot of my research has revolved around looking at the real personal consumption expenditures and the government's ability to predict those. And over a 20-year period I found that they were right about 46% of the time. The economy, in many ways, is like the weather. In fact, I've constructed mathematical models that show that it is very much like the weather. And a guy named Lorenz, who you may have heard of, found out in the early 70s that the weather could not be predicted more than a couple of weeks in advance. It never would be able to be because the number of variables involved are just too great. Uh one of his talks made famous the statement uh uh a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might precipitate a tornado in Texas. And that's absolutely true. There are small, very, very small inputs can make very, very big outputs. And the economy functions very much the same way. You could make a similar statement saying that someone buying a pair of shoes in Peru could trigger a depression in Poland.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

So certainly there are historic lessons that we can learn and probably should have. Have we?

SPEAKER_00 15:49

We have we don't appear to have learned them. Most people don't realize that Jamestown and the Mayfa Mayflower Colony were both founded on socialism, they were both collectivist beginnings, but they found out very quickly that everyone was starving. And only by converting back to free markets were they able to save the colonies.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

When you look at the situation moving forward in New York City, what questions do you now have? What will you look for when it comes to indicators of economic movement in one way or another?

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Well, what I would look for was Mamdami's vision beginning to fall apart and people becoming disgusted with his socialist ideas. I think that's the most likely outcome. And in many ways, that's a good outcome. Every time they try a social experiment and it fails, it turns more people against socialism.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

What types of things might fail first?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Well, I think the first thing would probably be the buses and his ability to construct government-run grocery stores.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

And so those are two of the main platforms that he that he ran on, that and and uh child care, uh free childcare. He he's down two out of three already, is from from what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah, I mean his ideas about the grocery stores, he's flip-flopped on it. First, he said he could do it just by saving money, then he said, well, he might take a little bit of tax money. But when you look at the realities of the situation, grocery stores have some of the lowest returns of any organization. They're usually in the two and three percent profit neighborhood, net profit. And what that means is that let's take Walmart for example, but you could equally use Costco or Kroger. Walmart can leverage buying and get reduced rates in the 25% neighborhood, and they're making profits of 2%, 3% maybe, and so we're talking around 20% below wholesale, below regular wholesale. New York grocery stores run by Mamdami are not are not gonna get anything close to that kind of leverage because it's a it's a small market. I mean, we think of New York City as big, but compared to nationwide and worldwide, like Walmart deals with, it's a tiny market. And so what he's gonna have to end up at best charging wholesale, which is gonna be 20% more than what Walmart charges.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

It doesn't sound like you thought this through. Yeah. Now, the fact that New Yorkers elected this guy seems to be of national interest. I mean, here are you and I are talking about it right now. Nobody really cared who the mayor of New York City was before. So why are people who don't live there so concerned now?

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Well, I think they see it as a harbinger of what might come. I think and in fact, uh there was a similar thing in Seattle. I mean, there there are a lot a lot of socialists pushing hard, very hard, to try and get socialism enacted. Um part of the title of my book, Why Socialism Struggles, goes on to say exposing the economic errors that undermine utopian ideals. And that's a lot of it. We're talking about people with utopian ideals. It's they might as well be believing in unicorns. There's absolutely no way what they wish would happen can happen. And it's because they're basing what they what they believe on emotion, not reality. A really good example. I love the Beatles, but John Lennon was certain was no economist, and so when he wrote the song Imagine, he's writing essentially a an ode to socialism.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

He did he is, and I I pointed that out on this program before. Yes, you are absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

But the title says it all. He's imagining it, he's not painting a picture of something that could ever really happen. If you think if you play through the words in your mind, you it's obvious to see. Imagine no possessions. Now, in what reality are people anywhere in the world going to give up the idea of possessions? They aren't.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Nor will they give up religion or or borders.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

That's right. That's exactly right. And so they are ideals. I mean, in some ways, some people can be attracted to them. Personally, I'm not even crazy about the ideals, but I can see how some people could be. They talk a lot about equality. Equality is a myth. We aren't equal. Now, we should be equal in the eyes of the law, we should be equal in the eyes of society. But not only are we not equal, we wouldn't want everyone to be equal. One of the examples I use in my book is one of my wonderful editors has a degree in English lit edited my book, found all kinds of mistakes. Now, if we were equal, it would mean that we could swap roles. She could have written the book and I could have edited it, and we would have had a complete disaster because I'm probably the world's worst editor. I see what I meant, or who whoever the writer meant instead of what was actually said. So I don't make any corrections. And she's found things that I never noticed. I used the word thing, I think, or things a hundred and some times. And so she insisted we go back through and change the word things to whatever the thing was.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

That's a good editor. But you're right. Certainly we're not equal, but I think everyone wants we all want to be treated equally. And that's certain that's certainly a worthy goal. Who's responsible for the ignorance of America's young people about socialism?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Well, that's a fairly complicated question. Obviously, the teachers' unions are about as far left as any other union organization. And I speak to that having been a member of the NEA a generation or two ago. And they put a lot of pressure on teachers to push the progressive agenda. That's one factor. I think another factor is the problems that capitalism itself has. I certainly am not going to sit here and say that capitalism is wonderful as it's being implemented now. A large part of the problem is crony capitalism, and a large part of the problem is government's overwhelming desire to fix things. I mean, we do elect people because we want them to solve problems, but most of the things that they try and fix, they actually make worse. Because it's it's not true socialism, but it's the same instinct. It says, we know better. We can solve a problem that everybody else can't. And that's nonsense. The economy works best, particularly in capitalism, when it's left alone. When capitalism in some way gets out of control, it's the government's job to regulate it. But too often the government doesn't. Where I live here in Arizona, we have what's called open fence laws, which means if I want to keep my property safe, and I have several acres here, I have to fence out the cattle. If the cattle get through and I have to construct a very specifically defined legal fence, if I don't do that and the cattle get into my property, crash through my patio door and eat my furniture, that's my problem.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

So that that would be one example of how how government tried to fix a problem but made it worse. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Well, it's also an it's more maybe an example of crony capitalism. They decided to help the ranchers at the expense of everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Okay. And so the and the ranchers here in Arizona would say, Well, but you want cheap beef, don't you? Well, they're providing cheap beef to the entire nation on our backs. And I've spent literally thousands of dollars and thousands of hours building fences. It's not fun.

unknown 25:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Would the Affordable Care Act be an example of the government trying to fix something and making it worse?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Absolutely. In fact, that's what this whole government shutdown was about. Is this they wanted to extend the Obamacare subsidies? And it's amazing to me that they can both at one point claim that they're bringing down health care costs and at the same time want an extra mil trillion and a half dollars to subsidize it.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yes.

unknown 26:27

Clearly.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

It is not affordable if you need a billion dollars.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And it's not, I would suggest that a lot of why it's not affordable. I mean, I could tell you a long story about that. I've researched it very carefully, but basically, because of price controls in the 40s, the government decided to give Blue Cross and Blue Cross and Blue Shield some big breaks, make them untaxable, so on and so forth. And that resulted in a critical economic error. This happens so much of the time when you deal with government. They separated the consumer from the provider. Every time you do that, markets fail. Because we can't shop for health care. We can shop for insurance, but that's not really the same thing. I have no when I go to the doctor, I have no idea what I'm paying. And I can't even find out. If I ask how much a drug costs, they don't know. The doctor can't tell you. Because it's all done through insurance companies. He lived in a normal home, wasn't rich by any means, and he was a really good physician. He was very popular. Why is that? Because we can't shop. If doctors had to compete, like they did back when my grandfather was a doctor, it would change everything. Prices would come down instantly.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

So is this a symptom of the cronyism capitalism that you spoke of, or is this a symptom of socialism?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Well, it's it's essentially socialism. I mean, it is it's it's a socialist-like effect. I would say I would call it more accurately, statism, but it's the government meddling in something, not understanding what they're doing, and and wrecking it. Another good example is education, particularly at the college level. Quality is is is measurably going down, and the money for professors and buildings is dramatically going up. Why? Because in the 70s we started subsidizing education, and we subsidized it to the extent that people stop shopping. You can go to any college you want now because you can get enough Pell Grants and student loans that anybody can do it. Now, of course, they'll end up in debt for the rest of their life, but it's not presented that way, it's presented as though you get a free education.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Now, that education does come at a cost, and I think what we're learning is that a lot of that cost is indoctrination. And but that that's always been the case. I mean, even before public schools, uh public schools became a thing because they there was they wanted a separation from the Catholic schools. It seems to me though, though, and and I I I could be wrong, you might know more about this than I do, and probably do. Did we stop teaching about communism and socialism when the Soviet Union was dissolved? Did we just think, okay, well, that's over now. The Cold War, we won the Cold Or we don't have to worry about this anymore.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I think there's some truth in that. I think it it's maybe more that the socialists saw that as an opportunity they could exploit. They said, now that people are not as worried about kind of communism and socialism, it gives us an end to start pushing it. And they and we won't be cracked down on, as it were.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

And and you wrote a book about how socialism struggles. Have you found your warnings about socialism being met with resistance? And if so, by whom?

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Well, since the book isn't out publicly yet, it won't be out till January 30th, 20th, rather, sorry. Um, the only people that have read it are people that have been sent advanced readers' copies, and most of them have been people that were friendly to the ideas to begin with. Okay, and so uh I really can't say um yet. So you're sure I'll find out.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

You have all that criticism to to look forward to, then don't you?

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Now one of the other things that you that you focus on is value. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 31:17

That's absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

What should I know about how value is created and calculated?

SPEAKER_00 31:25

Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest misconceptions in economics is people think that things have value, that that value is intrinsic to the things. So, for example, they think gold is just naturally valuable, diamonds are just naturally valuable, or X amount of labor is naturally valuable. None of those things are true. We each have inside of us, and this is a not well understood notion, but we each have inside of us a list or a web, if you like, of how we value things. I value this more than I value this, I value this more than I value either of those. If we look at all take all of the people in the world and put all those lists together, that's where value comes from. It's constructed by everyone. And that changes from time to time. It changes within each of us. What we value today might not be the same as what we value tomorrow, first, second, or third. And sometimes the things aren't things. For example, Nathan Hale valued honor and duty above his life when he said, I have I regret that I have but one life to lead for my country. And this seems to be true of all life, it isn't just humans that do this. So, for example, if you were to put a bale of hay a hundred meters from a cow and another bale of hay 500 meter meters from the cow, the cow is going to go to the nearest one. Now, I don't think cows do calorie calculations, but at some level the cow understands that it's burning calories to get to the hay to get calories, and if it burns more calories than it will consume when it gets to the hay, it won't live very long. And in fact, where I live, there's cattle all over I mentioned earlier, cattle roaming around all the time, and you can see by their trails how they figure out the most efficient routes. So this is something that's that's true for plants will grow to this, grow toward the sun. You put a plant in a room, yes. Do I think plants think about which way to grow? No, of course not, but somehow they do it, they act as though they know what they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

So they know that the sun is valuable as the cow knows that the hay is valuable. Exactly. What I'm gathering from what you're saying right now is that there is really nothing that has a concrete non-wavering value.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

No, of course not. And this uh it comes up a lot when we talk about labor. We say we work for a living, that's a dumb idea. We don't work for a living. Work is a measure of expenditure, and so if I spend all day digging holes and filling them up again, I've done a huge amount of work. What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't I get paid a lot? Because I created no value. We don't work for a living, we create value for a living. That's what you and I are trying to do right this minute. We're trying to create value for somebody else. And as we try and create value for others, we make the world a better place. But in socialism, you're not allowed to create value, you're assigned a job. You're told this is what you're gonna do. And it has nothing to do with your wanting to help your fellow man by creating value for them, it has only to do with doing your job. You're assigned a drone.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Okay, well, let me let me share a story with you. Back in 1994, my my late wife and I were in the car, and a commercial for a Pink Floyd concert came on the radio. I had just recently asked her if she wanted to go see Z Z Top, and she said, No, I saw them at my last concert. I said, When was that? She said, 20 years ago. So, but after this commercial on the radio, she says, I could do Pink Floyd. Well, that's all I needed to hear. I went to my local record store. I bought two tickets to the show. In fact, do you want to take a guess at how much those tickets cost in 1994?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Oh gosh. I I am a musician, but I that's too long ago for me to uh to make a guess that I would guess maybe $50.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Well, it was $43 a piece to see Pink Floyd at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. But I wanted to make it special for her because she hadn't been to a concert in 20 years. So I asked the owner of the radio station where I worked part-time if he could get me on a deal deal on a limousine to the show. He said that he would trade out half the cost of the limousine if I would work off the other half. Now, I don't recall what my hourly wage was or how much the limousine cost at the time, but in my head I did the math, and it took, I it would take me two weekends to work off my cost of the limousine. From Port Wainemi in Ventura, California, all the way down to Pasadena and back for the Pink Floyd Show. We tipped the driver, we bought a few drinks, we had a great time. Now, that experience still holds a great deal of value for me. And it was obviously a great value at the time, I think, too, looking back on it now. I spent maybe 200 bucks in cash and two weekends playing rock and roll on the radio in Ventura, California to pay for it. Uh KXBS, as a matter of fact. Now, economists know that I got a service. It was partly paid for by my labor and partly traded for commercials on the radio, giving value to the limo company's marketing. On the other side of the coin, the radio station didn't benefit financially, but made an employee very happy. That experience has proven to have more value than I could have ever imagined or even expected, and still holds value for me today. I maintain that my wife and I got the best value out of the whole deal. Is there even a way for economists to measure who got the best value? And is is that something they're interested in?

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Well, in a sense, yes. In a free economy, nobody gets the best value. There are people often paint false scenarios that make it appear that way. For example, if you and I go out to dinner and you like bread and I like salad, and you got a lot of extra bread and I got a lot of extra salad, so we swap. Now, do we care what the menu price of both those items was? No, we both got what we wanted, and that's the way fair exchange works. That's the basis of fair trade, is everybody wins. And what artificial value is attached to something is meaningless. I'm sure there are lots of people that would would would not trade places with you in that situation for anything. They would have said, Well, that's a bad deal. I'm not going to do that. But for you, it was a great deal. And it's all based on our internal values, what we each individually value. And the whole idea of capitalism and fair trade is based on the idea that we can exchange things and both win. And that's the thing that socialists never get through their heads. They can't understand the idea that you can have an exchange that appears to be unfair, where both parties are delighted with it and both parties win. In your case, it's entirely possible that the radio station thought your goodwill was worth it, that they were making a trade that was very good for them. And you obviously got a trade that was very good for you. Everybody wins.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Everybody wins. Now, in asking the question the way I did, could I have just made the cost of concert tickets go even higher?

SPEAKER_00 39:49

It's going to be hard to get them much higher than they are right now.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

That might be true. Now, how would the cost of concert tickets be different in a socialist economy?

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Well, in the first place, in most socialist economies, there wouldn't be any concert tickets because if they're actually following true Marxism, that's concerts are frivolous and you don't have those. If they did have them, they would appoint musicians to play at the concert, and they would appoint, they would charge some specific amount, or they would just say it's a free concert.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

That's all there is to it, then, huh?

SPEAKER_00 40:30

Yeah, the government runs everything in socialism, but you know, it's easy to look at some of the socialist countries. North Korea is not famous for its big concerts. No, no, it is not.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Is there anything I didn't ask you about, or anything you just want to share?

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Well, I I really believe that my book is is a big part of the answer to our problems. I think it's it's I've written it in a very readable way. It's mostly a question-answer format. Each chapter asks a big question, and then within that, there are lots of smaller questions that I answered because that's what I spend most of my professional life doing is answering questions. And I picked a lot of questions that I get asked all the time about economics and tried to answer them in a way that, well, in fact, one of the reviewers on Goodreads that has read one of the advanced readers copy actually said that it makes makes the conclusions appear obvious. Not only do they end up agreeing, but they end up agreeing and going, Well, it how could it be any other way? Like the example with the cow in the hay. I mean, I try and answer the questions in a way that makes it very, very difficult for people not to see what's really going on. People reading that book, unless they are absolutely dye-in-the-wool, community socialists, I think are going to change their minds.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Well, look, we'll look forward to that release in January, as you said, correct?

SPEAKER_00 42:02

You bet.

SPEAKER_01 42:03

All right. Dr. Doug Cardell, thank you so much for being with me here on the listening tube today. I really do appreciate it, and I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I have.

SPEAKER_00 42:13

I did. I really enjoyed it, Mr. Woodley. I'm glad you invited me.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

Doug's book to be released in January is called Why Socialism Struggles: Exposing the Economic Errors That Undermine Utopian Ideals. You can learn more about Doug and his book at Why Socialism Struggles.com. Thank you, Dr. Doug Cardell, for spending some time with me in the Listening Tube. The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly, Copyright 2025. Shout out to some new areas tuning in: Kingsland, Georgia, Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania, Randolph Township, New Jersey, and Nanaimo, British Columbia. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou at Infinitum.