#431 Franklin Camargo - How Socialism Destroyed Venezuela

0:00What's up ladies and gentlemen boys and girls around the world? I'd like to welcome you back to the Real Talk with Zubi Podcast. On today's episode I've got a fantastic guest. I'm going to be talking to Franklin Kamargo. He is a political and cultural commentator who is based in the USA, but originally from Venezuela. Welcome to the show Franklin, how you doing? Thank you Zubi, thank you for having me. Such a pleasure to be here. Yeah, absolutely a pleasure, man. So Franklin, the first question I want to ask you, and you can answer this as long as you want. Take your time with this one. But tell me about your story about how you got to the place where you are right now. Yeah, sorry it is a long story. As you said I was born and raised in Venezuela. What used to be the reaches and wealthiest country in Latin America, quite frankly even one of the most successful in the Western hemisphere. I didn't get to say that. My parents saw a different country of course. People don't know this, but yes, in the 1950s Venezuela had the fourth largest economy. Even GDP per capita wise it was the fourth reaches one as well.

1:03A lot of resources, natural resources, but also a government that understood how wealth must be created and not necessarily distributed by the government and by politicians. Of course, I started to change back in the 1970s Venezuela embraced democratic socialism. Many people don't know this. People usually think that Chavez took power and then he destroyed the country. The destruction of Venezuela even started a little bit before that with some social democrats, politicians who nationalized the oil industry, expanded the welfare state and had this paternalistic view of the government. The idea that the government must take care of the people. We are a wealthy country, therefore everything should be free. So, Venezuela started to have some issues, double digits, inflation. People were not happy. Because Venezuelans had this mindset that we were a wealthy country.

2:06Regardless of the government, regardless of the politicians, maybe what we need is a government that is going to punish those who are taking advantage of the system, those who are too greedy, and the government is going to this time take care of Venezuelans. So, they voted for Chavez in 1999, who was of course a radical socialist. That moment I was only one year old and Chavez took power and well, we went from light socialism to radical extreme socialism. And, you know, everyone knows where Venezuela is right now. Chavez promised equality, 90% of Venezuelans living poverty. Chavez said that he was going to go after the rich. Well, he went after the rich. Now, the only wealthy people in Venezuela are those who are connected to the regime. But, you know, that is probably fair because they are working so hard for the people. He said he was going to go after corporations. He went after corporations.

3:06So, you know, that's the system that we have seen in Venezuela for almost three decades. I was born in a middle-class family. Both of my parents went to college. They worked really, really hard. My dad is an economist. My mom was a professor. They also had some small businesses like a makeup store that went bankrupt when when the economic situation was really, really difficult and hard because of government policies. And, you know what, the first time I got into politics, or that for some reason, the first event that had an influence in my life. So, then, I got into politics was when I was only six-year-old. I was only six. I didn't know anything about politics. I didn't understand economics. I didn't know the differences between capitalism and socialism. Probably, at that time, I didn't even, I had not heard the words yet. But, I went to the United States on a family vacation. And, again, I didn't know anything about government.

4:06I didn't know anything about politics. But, I could tell the difference between a personal society and a poor country. Look, the airport, the technology. And, I always use this as an example. The grocery stores. I remember as a kid witnessing the variety of Oreos. And, that blew my mind. So, that is a contrast between a capitalist country and a socialist country. A country that is so clear, that is so strong, that even a six-year-old kid who doesn't know anything about politics could tell. By looking at the grocery stores, the cars, the airport, the technology, the view games. So, since that time, I always had that idea in my mind that there was this great country that I was able to visit the United States. And, I wanted to live in a country like that one. At that moment, what I had in mind was, as I was getting older, I need to learn what made that country that I visited so successful, so great.

5:09So, I got myself into politics. I read everything I could. I read about the decoration of independence. They found in fathers, John Locke, classical liberalism, libertarianism. I'm a big fan of Einran, Louis von Mises, Hajek, Milton Friedman. So, that was my life as a teenager. And, then, I was like, okay, I have to do something. I need to fight back. This regime in Venezuela is exercising a false right to enslave me. And, I did political activism. I worked with Maria Corina Maccialle, the Nobel Prize, peace winner from Venezuela. And, in her political party, I led peaceful protests. I even spoke out at college campuses. And, because of my activism, I was accused by the Venezuelan regime of being a terrorist. Of course, I'm not a terrorist. The only thing I did was to speak out. But, they accused me of wanting to set the classrooms on fire at my college campus.

6:14They accused me of wanting to attack professors and other students. So, look, I had a cousin who went to prison for two years for political reasons. I had friends who were sent to prison for political reasons. I knew I was next and I fled. Thankfully, I was able to come to the US legally. I claimed asylum and I was granted asylum under the first Trump administration. So, this country, the United States of America, saved my life. Now, I'm just trying to pay it back. I like to say that, look, George Washington would talk about Americans. And, when he would write letters to Americans, he would say, Americans, by birth, in Americans, by choice. I really think that I'm an American by choice since the moment I first visited this country, because I identified with the values that found this country. And then, when I needed freedom the most, I was able to move here. So, now what I do, as you said in the beginning, I'm a political commentator. I work at Prager U. I try to warn Americans about the dangers of socialism.

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8:15Were you in the capital or somewhere else? So I was in Maracae, and I was state, which is like two hours from the capital. And yeah, the situation is really hard, especially because in Venezuela, and when you talk to Venezuelans, especially older generations, you can tell there is like an nostalgic feeling. Because Venezuela is a great example of how socialism could destroy any country. Why? Because Venezuela is a country with a lot of natural resources. And it's also a country that used to be successful. So, you know, when people think about Africa, they just think about lack of resources, which is ignorance, of course. And they think about, well, they have always been poor, maybe colonialism, maybe slavery. So that they are just unlucky, they're always going to be poor. Which is, by the way, a run mindset and a run analysis about what's going on in Africa. But, you know, Venezuela used to be successful. Venezuela used to be a place of opportunity for European people who were fleeing war. It was a place of opportunity for Latin Americans who were trying to pursue a better life. And those who couldn't go to the US,

9:16would sometimes go to Venezuela as a plan B, as a second alternative in the 20th century. So, when you talk to Venezuelans, when you talk to older generations of Venezuelans, they are always going to tell you, wow, yeah, things were not like this. They didn't, the government clearly has destroyed our possibilities to have a better life, to have a great life, to have what we used to have. So, as a kid, you can feel that nostalgia. Going to the grocery store, not finding food, but my parents telling me that this is not normal. This is not how it is supposed to be. I remember I was seven or eight years old when the government was censoring TV outlets that were not just picking out against the government, necessarily, but just reporting facts. And my mom would warn me, warn me. You know, this is what dictatorships do. This is not okay. This is not what freedom looks like. And, you know, it was stressful as a kid

10:18because I do think that, of course, we need to be informed as a society. But I also think that kids should be kids. And I didn't have a normal childhood because even though my parents were working really hard, and in the beginning of my life, socialism had not destroyed my life entirely yet, that they were trying to. Yes, as a kid, I had a stressful childhood because I was constantly thinking about politics. And I could see how my parents were also concerned about the situation and how things were getting worse. And let me give you a very quick example. My parents had a makeup store. And I could see how the regime imposed price controls. You couldn't increase prices of your products more than 30% of its original costs. In a country that has an extremely high inflation, so I could witness how my parents were concerned about that situation, a violation of property rights, a violation of free markets. And yes, so that was my situation growing up,

11:20seeing how the country was getting worse, seeing how relatives and friends were escaping and leaving the country. And, you know, always having the hope and the optimism to try to see a better country, but not achieving that. What kind of stories do your parents tell you about when they were growing up there? Well, first, it was a way safer country. You were able to speak out against the government. You were able to protest. It was a country where you would constantly see foreigners going to Venezuela to visit, to do simple tourism. Venezuela has beautiful beaches, for example. And it was also a country of opportunities. You know, my generation didn't see my migration from other countries to Venezuela. However, when I would talk to my classmates, probably their parents came to Venezuela or their grandparents came to Venezuela, looking for a better life. So yes, my parents would talk to me about a country of opportunities, grossy stores that were packed.

12:23A country where, again, you know, my parents didn't come from a wealthy family, not even close. In fact, none of my grandparents went to college. Both of my parents went to college, and they, you know, worked really hard to be middle-class, upper middle-class, under Venezuela's standards. And, you know, it was a family that could take their kids to a family vacation to Disney, something that is not super easy to do when you are in Latin America. But again, we went from being that family that could come to the US on a family vacation in summer to be a family that was concerned about finding meat. So Chavez came to power in, was it 1999, you said? 1999. 1999. And he was democratically voted into powers, that correct? Yes. What were the, I know this is before you were born. But based on what you know, what were the social and economic and cultural conditions at the time,

13:23let's say, throughout the 90s in Venezuela, that you think led the way for him being able to be elected. Because normally, when such people come to power, whether it's, whether it's far left or it's far right, there's normally like a very specific cultural and environment, cultural and economic environment that allows it to happen. That is a great question, because by no means Venezuela was in a similar situation that it is right now, or that it has been for the last 10 or 20 years, but it wasn't that extremely successful country. Any more, it had double digit inflation. It had a government that was very corrupt. We had a by Paris and system, you know, a binary choice between two political parties. And they were both center left. They were both like social democrats, democratic socialists. Maybe one more lefty than the other one. I'm talking about the names are ade, ade, action, democratic, eco pay.

14:24They were both center left. They were both about welfare state, big government. And sure, they would, you know, allow some private property and private investment and private companies, but they were not capitalists at all. And the problem is, that is the problem. You don't defeat socialists by implementing light socialism. And that is a problem that I know I see in the US, with some people who want to oppose the DSA, but trying to adopt some light socialism. That is a problem. You are not going to defeat socialists. Why? Because by implementing democratic socialist policies, even though they are not necessarily super radical, as if it's not just about nationalization, but just regulation and big government and welfare state, you are going to create those, you're going to create economic problems, for sure. We know what it works, we know what it doesn't work. So by creating those problems, the population is going to try to embrace a more radical idea. And they are going to go for more socialism.

15:24So that is exactly what happened in Venezuela. In the 1990s, when Chavez took power in 1999 to be more specific, the government in Venezuela was already big. Key industries already belonged to the government. So what Chavez did was to apply an even more radical agenda and he also was a dictator, he implemented a dictatorship. He was democratically elected, but the first thing he did was to change the constitution. Something that the DSA wants to do in the United States, by the way. Another thing that Chavez did was that he abolished the Senate. Something that the DSA wants to do. So he changed the entire system and he also implemented more radical policies. Policies that the population embrace because they had already culturally embraced socialist ideas. Because we already had a big government before Chavez, Chavez just made it even more radical and bigger than ever before. How long do you think it took for the typical Venezuelan?

16:25In particular, the people who voted for him to wake up to what was happening to the country? Chavez was a very popular figure, especially among middle class and poor people. But overall, I mean, he had support from a lot of Venezuelans who felt that the government had betrayed them for a long time. However, it was very clear from the beginning that he was an authoritarian figure that was not solving Venezuelan problems. The thing is that it is hard to measure when he lost the electoral support because he rigged the system from the beginning. Yes, he was democratically elected and then everything he did after that, even a few weeks after, a few months after like changing the constitution, everything he did was to rig the system in his favor. However, I would say that probably in five to seven years after Chavez was already elected, I would say that probably most Venezuelans disagreed with him already,

17:26but it was impossible democratically speaking or by democratic conventional tools to change the government. Now, what you see in Venezuela is that around 80% of the population reject the regime. The regime that Chavez passed away in 2013, but officially some people think that it was around December 2012, but the system in place that we see today, even though we have seen some reforms because of Trump's pressure on the Venezuelan regime. But let's talk about the Venezuelan regime for what it is and for what it has been for the last three decades. Yes, it's a continuation of Chavez' system. The thing is that a country like Venezuela is also not destroyed just in one year or two years, especially when you had up oil barrels, at $100 each. In the beginning, you implement some welfare state and some people benefit, quote unquote, from it and they feel good. But at the end, those economic policies we know they don't work.

18:27So 10 years later, 50 years later, of course, there was almost no support for those in the regime. And now what we see is like, the echo into the most objective polls, less than 20% of the population support the current regime. Sadly, people realized that what they voted for wasn't good for them, but it was already too late because we had lost the country in the institutions. Tell me about Nicolas Maduro. Yes, so Nicolas Maduro was a big ally of Chavez from the beginning, even before Chavez, even won an election democratically. And I have repeated that Chavez won democratically. However, it is also important to mention that he was a member of the military. And in 1992, he tried to remove a democratic government by force. And at that moment, at that point, Nicolas Maduro was a big ally of Chavez as well. And Maduro worked in the Chavez administration for many years. He was vice-president when Chavez passed away.

19:28Before that, Maduro was also what he would be in Venezuela like a secretary of state. And he was a big ally. So before Chavez passed away, before he went to Cuba to have a surgery where he died, Chavez said, in case I die, please vote for Maduro. Maduro was never supported by a majority of Venezuelans. He won an election in 2013, but it was an election that was rigged completely. International organizations have recognized that there were a lot of irregularities. Venezuela was already a dictatorship back then. In 2013, when Maduro is in an illegal way elected as press. And he implemented the same policies that Chavez did. Some people say, well, he was even worse. It was just a different context. To me, they are both terribly, terribly bad. They implemented big government policies. They imposed price controls. They spent money as crazy for real government

20:28spending, regulation. They attacked property rights. They censored Venezuelans. They didn't believe in free speech. He was also corrupt. We know that Maduro was in charge of drug trafficking operation. He was in charge of El Cartel de los Soles, Cartel of the Suns. We also know by the DA, by the indictment that was introduced in 2024 by the Southern District of New York. And even by some statements made by people that worked for Maduro, we know that Maduro sent criminals from Venezuela to the United States with the intention to subvert America. And that's how we saw the killing of Lake Inrily or the killing of Jocelyn Nongarai, people that were killed by illegal aliens from Venezuela that were sent by Maduro. So when we talk about the Venezuelan regime, we're not just talking about a social discovery, that implement social policies. We're not just talking about dictatorship that doesn't allow free speech or free elections.

21:29It is also a regime that works as a cartel, as a mafia, as a criminal organization that has been trying to cause a lot of harm in the Western Hemisphere, more specifically the United States. Yeah, it's so interesting listening to you talk, Franklin, because I talk to a lot of people. I've traveled the world pretty extensively. I have spoken to many people from this former Soviet Union, and I've visited lots of those former communist countries. I have, my wife is half Cuban, so she's got a whole Cuban side of her family. And I spend a lot of time in Miami, where everyone knows there's lots and lots of Cubans over there talking to yourself. It's just interesting the contrast, the juxtaposition between people who they and their families,

22:31and even going back some of their ancestors, have grown up under real communism, real socialism, right? It's not an idea they learned about in university or whatever. It's like, no, they really experienced it. They lived through it for decades, they witnessed it, and pretty much universally, they all hate it, and they speak up very, very, very aggressively against it. And then I'm from the UK, but of course I spend a lot of time in the US and Western Europe and I've been Australia. Lots of these different countries, lots of these first world, especially Anglo-Sphere, but also not just the English speaking countries, but let's just say the Western first world countries, as we call them. There is this increasing, it's been around my entire life, I'm 40 years old, and I've always seen people who like to flirt with the ideas of communism, or if they want to water it down, they call it socialism.

23:33But particularly I'd say over the last 15 or so years, in all of these countries, whether you're talking about the UK or Canada, or the US, or pretty much any Western European country, there's been this rise in the popularity of these ideas, more and more Americans, more and more British people, particularly on the younger end, your generation, and younger even. Saying, oh, capitalism has failed, we need more socialism, the government needs to be doing more. Oh, actually, you know what? Yeah, I am a communist, they don't see anything wrong with saying that. And it's just so interesting, this difference between the reality of it, the reality of it, whether you're talking about reading books, whether you're reading Solje Nitsen, or you're just reading about the history of what's happened in these nations that have really, really done it, or talking to people who have lived through it, and very often left and fled to the UK, or fled to the USA, or gone somewhere else to get away from all of that.

24:36And I'm just curious to get, I have lots of opinions on this, but I'm just kind of curious to get your take, particularly given the work that you do now, when you're in the USA, you're not just in the USA, you're in California, you're not just in California, you're in Los Angeles, and I'm sure you're Gen Z, right? And in your generation, there are lots and lots of people who would consider themselves socialist. So, what's my question here? What do you make of that? Look, it's very frustrating, of course, as someone who is gay, a socialist country called myself a social-osm survivor. To me, anyone who lives in a socialist country and opposes social-osm and makes it to another country, to a free country, is a social-osm survivor, and especially considering my story, that's how I identify myself, because that's how I see socialism as a dangerous idea that doesn't allow you to think freely, to speak freely, to act freely. So, I came to America, the land of the free, which I really believe in that,

25:36with great values, really great values, a country that has done so good for the entire world. And I underestimated the left a little bit in the beginning. And I was like, well, I'm in America, socialism is never going to take power in America, I'm good, I'm saved, I saved my life, it's good. I'm going to have a great life. And I'm having a great life in America, I want to be very clear about that. But we cannot underestimate the left, because facts are not enough in themselves. And let me explain myself. We know what happened, where a lot of people know what happened on China, on their mouth. We know what happened in the Soviet Union. We know what happened in Germany. It was divided into two. East Germany, West Germany, same culture, same country, same language, basically a similar territory, similar natural resources, same background. And you implemented socialist policies in one side, and you implemented capitalist

26:38countries, capitalist policies on the other side. And the contrast was huge. And we know what happened when the Berlin Wall fell. We know where people run from and where they went to. They escaped the socialist side, they went to the Western capitalist free market. Side, we have Korea right now. We can measure the contrast between North Korea and South Korea from space. The contrast is huge. The more you implement socialist ideas, the poorer you're going to be, the less free you're going to be, the more unhappy you're going to be. We know the facts, we know the history, we know the evidence. We have seen countries that go from being capitalist to socialist. We know how they are doing. We see the other way around countries that used to be socialist and our capitalists and we can, we can tell the contrast. So it doesn't matter the time, it doesn't matter the culture, it doesn't matter the territory, it doesn't even matter the context. If you implement socialism, you're going to be less free, you're going to be more poor.

27:42So why are people still supporting socialism? Because socialism is not supported by facts, it's a consequence of morality. People support socialism because they have embraced the idea that the government should access to make their life easy in every metric. That the government should access not to protect your individual rights, which is the actual role of government, but to give you everything you need. Because there is also this morality that inequality of outcomes is something bad and evil, which is not inequality of outcomes is something normal. It's good in a free society what is, but it's poverty. People have accepted this idea that billionaires and people who have made more money are bad, are evil, are too greedy and we should go after them. So that is why people are supporting socialism in spite of all the facts, the evidence and the history that we know is because they have accepted the socialist premise,

28:46the socialist morality. And many people on the right are not doing a great job either. I hate when people say that well, it looks nice in theory, but it doesn't work. When we find the socialist look, no, it doesn't look nice in theory. The fact that some people think that way is exactly the problem. We should tell people, we should tell young people my generation that they need to have self-esteem. They need to believe that they can have a great life if they work hard, that they need to be responsible for their decisions, that those who have made more money, if they have made it fairly and legally, they have a natural right to keep that money. And that billionaires by the way are making our lives better. Elon Musk employs more than 130,000 people. Duretly, he pays a lot of taxes, he creates products and goods that we like. So actually, when you look at the countries that have the most billionaires per capita,

29:50they're all rich countries. So this idea of eating the rich or we should go after billionaires, it usually is something that is popular in wealthy societies because you don't really have that many billionaires in poor countries except those who are in power, of course, that become rich and wealthy. Taiwan, the United States, Linch and Stain, those are Norway, those Denmark, those are the countries who have the most billionaires per capita. So what I'm trying to say is that yes, it is very frustrating to find people that despite all the facts, all the evidence, all the history, they choose to support socialism and socialist policies, but it is a consequence of morality. And it is also, of course, a consequence of ignorance. Many of the facts that I just gave you are the historical events that have happened over the last 100 years. Many young people don't know about that or they will provide excuses. Oh, why is a Cuban willing to risk his life on a raft and make it to Miami? Oh, because of sanctions and the blockade.

30:50So they have been part lies about what is going on in socialist countries, about Cuba. And there is always this intention to blame the US and to blame capitalism for everything. Now, let me make something very clear too. People are concerned about the economy. They are concerned about housing. They are concerned about health care and rightfully so. The problem is that the reason why housing is so expensive is because of regulation. In zoning laws, the reason why in America health care is so expensive is because the government has over-regulated that sector a lot. Now, when we see the least-regulated areas of the economy, those are the ones are the easiest to afford for people. And that's something that we need to talk to young people. Your concerns are valid, but the one to blame is not capitalism, is not three markets. The one to blame for that is statism, is big government. And it happens the same, not just in the US. It happens the same in Europe, it happens the same in Latin America.

31:53And this is also the problem that you have when some people criticize, some people in government, criticize socialism and I'm all for it. But... Imagine your friend tells you she's taking an innocent family trip to Greenville, South Carolina. We'll call her Emma. The trip sounds great to you. Hiking at John's Gap, dinner at Topsoil, a room at the best hotel in town. Harmless, right? Here's the thing. Emma and her family never return from Greenville. They disappear. You search for answers, but nothing adds up. Emma had a great life back home. You guys were best friends. What happened? Well the truth is, once Emma realized she could have access to Michelin recognized restaurants, nature, local shops, and performing arts, all in one place, everywhere else started to seem a little. Meh. Emma's vacation is a cautionary tale. If you're coming this way, don't forget to tell your friends and neighbors goodbye. Visit Greenville, South Carolina, but you may never want to leave.

32:57Learn more at visitcreamvilsc.com. Then they implement some socialist policies without the label. And then the bad results that you get from those policies are created to capitalism. And that is a problem. And I'm going to say something. By the way, I'm glad that Trump beat Kamala Harris, 100%. But Trump has had some state policies. I personally disagree with tariffs, for example. So the bad outcomes that you can get from tariffs are going to be blame on capitalism. But tariffs are tax on imports. We're against that. You know? So this is just an example of many of why are, why are people are craving socialism? And of course you have the intellectual class that are, that they usually feel attracted to those ideas, in my opinion, because of ignorance on economics, because of resentment, and also because of arrogance. Yeah. You know, as you were speaking, I was just thinking that this applies to

34:01so many things across the left-right spectrum. I think one of the biggest disadvantages that conservatives have, it doesn't matter where they are in the world, one of the disadvantages of conservative or right-wing politics is everything takes more explanation. The arguments are more complex and sophisticated, and require several levels of explanation and understanding, and it takes more time. It's okay. If someone comes along and they're frustrated by the economy, and they're wondering why they're dollar or pound or euro or whatever currency is, you know, losing power every year, it seems like the prices are all going up. It's harder and harder for them to get a house. Their grandfather could get a house, and now on paper they're making way much more money, but they can't get on the housing ladder. If they go to a leftist and they ask why is this happening, they can just say it's the billionaires.

35:03The billionaires. The billionaires are taking everyone else's money, and that's why there's not enough to go around. They can just say it's corporate, it's billionaires, corporate greed, right? It's the system is against you, and it can be a one-word explanation. Or if you take something like minimum wage, someone's like, why is that? If you just say, let's just make minimum wage $30 an hour. That sounds, I mean, I can see how that sounds good to someone who has no economic or very little economic training, which most people obviously don't have. Oh yeah, people aren't earning enough money. Why don't we just increase minimum wage? Voila, right? It sounds okay, but say you're coming from a strong conservative or a libertarian perspective, and someone is like, what do you think minimum wage should be? Let's say you say, it shouldn't exist, it should be zero. Yeah. The natural reaction to that is even people who are conservative would go,

36:03whoa, whoa, Mr. Radical over here, right? It takes a lot of explanation as to how increasing minimum wages can actually not just lead to price rises, but it can increase unemployment and so on and so forth. And actually, even if you don't have a minimum wage officially set by the government, you still kind of end up with a minimum wage because the free market does its job, and people aren't going to work. But that's like a whole long explanation, right? I might take five minutes, 10 minutes to explain that position to someone. And I feel like it's this way on almost every single issue, okay? There are very few issues where like the conservative one just has a quick, easy thing that you can stick on a banner, right? Stick on a sign, and you can just hold it on a sign. Whereas with the left, especially the further left you go, the more simple the answers are, but the more disastrous the policies from my perspective, certainly, but I'd even say objectively,

37:05if you just run with them all the way. Correct. No, I totally agree with you. It requires more complex answers, and there is also an element that we should take into consideration. That is why we should try to stop the government as much as we can before it is too late. And is that when you have a policy that requires government intervention, it creates that mindset on people that without that government intervention, we would be worse off. And let me give you an example, minimum wage. We know the problems that come with minimum wage, and I do supreme minimum wage that would be zero, because I think that minimum wage is an obstacle to on skilled individuals. And when you drive the cost of wage up, it usually makes goods and services more expensive or it increases unemployment. And the economic data is there. But the thing is that when you have a minimum wage that is imposed by the government, people just take for granted that if the government didn't impose that minimum wage, we were all these slaves. And it is not the case, but that's how they think, because they have

38:12always seen that policy there, that policy in place. It happens with price controls as well. And if the government doesn't impose price control on certain industries, then everything is just going to go up and it's going to be too expensive. Or the reason why something is expensive is because billionaires have been too greedy and making too much money, not because of inflation, not because of government and spending. It requires more complex answers. And we also, which I think is important, we're not making the moral case enough. And I go again with this. I reject price controls not just because they don't work economically and the evidence is clear. But you, the government, you have no right to tell me how much I should sell my product for. You have no right to do that. It is my property. I created it. It belongs to me. If I want, I want to, I can sell it. If I don't want to sell it, fine. You, the government, you have no right to tell me how much this should cost. And I think that's also an argument that we should make when we talk

39:15about taxes. I hate, I despise when leftists say, oh, Republicans or right-wingers, they just want to give give. They just want to give money to the right. I implement in tax breaks. Tax breaks are given money to the rich. That money belongs to them in the first place. Do you think you're entitled to someone else's money? There is an evil, evil ideology. It is also very anti-American. So sometimes the way we frame our arguments, how we try to disagree with socialists or debunks some socialist policies, if it really matters, we need to make socialists feel ashamed of their ideas. We need to expose that they're envious for the most part that they have resentment in their hearts. And there is something we need to do. This doesn't mean that every socialist is an evil person and we need to hate them. No, no, but it is an evil ideology. I would like to live in a society where someone who claims to be a communist is seen as bad and evil as someone who claims to be

40:16a fascist, as someone who claims to be a Nazi. Because those are all collectivists, anti-individual liberty, ideologies that have only created death and chaos. So why can someone in the US right now claim to be a communist and no one is going to attack him, like morally no one is going to be like, oh, how does he dare to be a communist? Because we have accepted as a society, even people who disagree with communists, that they have good intentions. That they might be wrong. It doesn't really work. But you know, they have good intentions. It looks nice. They don't have good intentions for the most part. They're either ignorant or evil. And none of those things are good. They are supporting an ideology that wants to take your property rights away. And in an ideology and a government in someone who is willing to take your property rights away is willing to take your life away from you as well. Because property is just an extension of your life, of what you create.

41:21And what you need to survive in life. So yes, I totally agree with you. You know, sometimes making these arguments are more complex and that's why we need to work really hard. But we need to talk about morality. Because yes, we do have the moral background. Those who defend freedom and the individual, they do have, we do have the moral background in this debate. Yeah, it's a very good point about making more moral arguments. And it's interesting because, you know, I totally understand your idea of, you know, someone outright declaring that they were communists or waving a hammer and sickle flag. It should create the same sting and revulsion as someone throwing up a swastika or, you know, doing a Nazi saluter outright just declaring, yeah, I'm a fascist. I'm a Nazi or something. Unfortunately, I don't think it ever will carry the same sting. And it's related to what we were just saying before. I think it's even more layered. I mean, number one, you have the fact that a lot of

42:21people, everyone knows, you know, anyone who's gone to high school or university anywhere in the West, has some idea that, you know, of World War II and the Nazis were the bad guys. Everybody knows who Hitler is to the point where if you want to call someone, you know, a metaphor for someone being very evil is to compare them to Hitler, you know, even though if we're just going by, share number of people killed, I mean, Mao has a higher body count, Stalin has a higher body count. And this was also around a similar time period. But so there's that aspect. And then there's the aspect that, you know, academia leans so heavily left that, you know, addressing the genuine far right and the problems with that. No, everyone's happy to do that. Conservatives are happy to do that too. But when it comes to the far left, right, not just your standard Democrat voter or typical person who leans a little bit left, but you're talking like the genuine far left. I mean, some people don't

43:23even acknowledge that that exists, right? There are some people who don't even think that there is a far left. So academia and everything downstream of that, they run a lot of cover for the far left. And then again, you know, it's very easy. I can explain to someone very quickly why Nazi ideology is bad. Okay, any any ideology, any political ideology or set of policies, which is explicitly promoting racial superiority and the demigration or brutalization or extermination of quote unquote lesser races or any demographic of people, you can explain to a three year old, you can explain to a toddler why that's a bad idea, right? What do you think of it? What do you think about a belief system where everybody who looks like this or is from this place, we just kill them, right? Every everyone, you don't need, you don't need to be sophisticated to understand, oh yeah, that's, that's really bad. Like that's horrible. Anyone who supports that, you know, I don't want to be

44:25around them. But again, with communism, you have to go through layers. Okay, so yes, communism is a mass, it's a genocidal ideology, right? It causes mass murder in the long run. When you play it out to its logical conclusion, which has happened in many places, Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, parts of Central America, right? It leads to millions and millions of people dying, sometimes directly being shot, sometimes executed in other ways, sometimes mass starvation. These are the inevitable results. But why? That takes some explanation. Okay, if the ideology is, we want the state to, you know, control the means of production and we want everyone to have equality, everyone to have the same amount, even if, you know, someone might feel uncomfortable with that, especially the idea of the state owning everything. But on the surface, it doesn't directly link to

45:28millions of people dying, right? You have to explain this level and then this level, this leads to this, which leads to this, which leads to this. Whereas with straight-up fascism or Nazism, it's just like, okay, this, the policy is death, right? This is what I mean. And I think for that reason, it's hard. I totally agree with you again. It does require more explanation. And by the way, I do want to make something clear and I know you're going to agree with me. It's not that socialism or communism, you know, it happens to deliver mass murder. No, I do think it's intended to be that way. In what sense? You know, if the state is going to own everything and you don't want to give up your property, they're going to take it by force. I mean, at the end, it's funny because communists talk about we believe in a classless, stale, less, moneyless society. We don't want the government to even exist. That's our end goal. Communists do talk about that. Many people don't know, but they want the government to not exist at the end. How do you reach that level, which by the way has never

46:31really been reached in that sense? And it would be a very dystopian society, horrible, terrible, which shouldn't aspire that not even in theory. But how do you reach that level? How do you first implement public ownership of the means of reduction? People are not going to give up their property voluntarily and they shouldn't. So you need force, you need coercion. Then you understand that socialists and communists, they do need force, they want force, they promote force from the government to violate individual rights. So yes, it is intended to be a evil authoritarian, anti-individual liberty ideology, but I do agree with you that it's harder to explain. It's more complex in its reasoning. We need to talk about it. We need to debate. We need to analyze way easier to point out to the evil of Nazis when they are so spoken and so to read about they want to be discriminated against people on the basis of race. And of course, that is easy

47:34to easier to criticize. I think that Nazism is an evil ideology, fascism is an evil ideology. In communism and socialism are evil ideologies too and they do share similarities. And the biggest similarity is that they are collectivists. They believe that the individual as an individual entity shouldn't exist. His rights do not matter. The collective matters. The tyranny of the majority. And that's why at the end, the biggest disagreement that we should have with these ideologies is I'm for the individual. I believe in capitalism because first I believe in the individual and I believe that the individual must be free and must be free from government coercion to pursue his unhappiness, which by the way is my favorite part of the decoration of independence because it doesn't mean that the government is going to make you happy. That is not social. The government is not going to make you happy. You have the right to pursue your unhappiness. But yes, this is way more complex,

48:36but that is something that we need to talk. We need to fight back. People ask me, do you think that socialism will always be a popular idea? You know, sometimes it's going to be less popular that some other years. But yes, it's always going to be popular. It's always connected as an idea because always that there is resentment, always that there is envy, always that people or some people aspire to be equal in outcomes. Yes, you're going to have socialists and you're going to have socialism. Now, the degree that we allow depends on us and on how hard we fight back and how successful we are in the fight. Yeah, envy drives far more politics than I think people would like to admit. For sure. I often say that, you know, there are a lot of people who they disguise their hatred of the rich as love for the poor. That's why they say eat the rich. They don't say feed the poor. When you look at the slogans that catch on and the posts that are going viral and people wearing t-shirts, it doesn't say feed the poor. It says eat the rich. And then what's funny

49:41about it as well, especially in places like the USA, is a lot of the people who promote those ideas and who say those catch phrases on a global scale and on a historical scale, they're very often in the global 1%. Yeah, yeah. Right. So maybe in the USA, they're not in the 1%. Because it takes, you know, you have to be pretty wealthy to be in the 1% in the USA because it's such a rich country. But if you look around the entire globe, I think worldwide, I think in terms of income, someone can, I need to double check this because it changes. But I think in terms of pure income, if you earn over about $30,000 a year, then you're globally in the 1% in terms of income. Now, of course, you know, countries have, you know, money doesn't go as far in different countries, places have things priced differently. But just to give people some perspective on how well off the West is, how well off you probably are if you're in the US or in the UK or Canada,

50:41even if it might not feel like it, compared to all the billions of people around the planet and billions of people who have existed before we did like, where are ridiculously well off? Totally. And actually about that, I have a very heart-tick that when I say it, people are attacking me all the time. But it's, you know, I'm just going to mention the data. And I say, poor people in America and in capitalist countries, or countries that allow some free markets, they leave a decent life and they leave way better than any wealthy individual from 200 years ago. Poor people in America, poor households, 80% of them have access to air conditioning. 70 to 80% of them have at least one car. One-third of poor households have two cars. I think it's more than 70% of them have a microwave. They have access to internet. They have cell phones. Yes, they're overweight. They're overweight. I'm totally confused.

51:43Where people are obese and Bino-Bees, by the way, is not healthy. This is how I joke. But you know, you know that they have access to food. They have what I care about. I don't care about inequality, because inequality is the differences between individuals. We can be unequally rich. We can be unequally successful or we can be equally poor and equally miserable. I prefer the first one, because it means that everyone is living better and also because it's a free society. But at the end, I don't care if Elon Musk goes on a private jet, the fanciest private jet that you could think of to fly from LA to Miami. If I, just an immigrant, I'm traveling on a plane, commercial flight from LA to Miami. It means that the difference is between Elon Musk and me in that specific context, of course. Yes, it's about the luxury and the capacities, maybe the time, but at the end, we both have access to good and services that we need. And it's the same about

52:50housing, it's the same about food, it's the same about transportation. I don't care if you drive a better car than I drive if I'm driving a car as well. And at the end, we do know that when you have an extreme wealth, when you have a country that is getting richer and more successful and more free, at the end, we're all going to get richer. And that's why you have in America, 78 to 80% of poor households having at least one car. When cars, when they were first invented, they were only for wealthy people. But because of social and economic mobility and economic growth and capitalism, now is a resource and a good that almost anyone could afford in America. People really lack perspective. And I can understand why people are, it's not hard for me to understand people's frustrations on pretty much any subject. I don't think there's a subject where I struggle to understand why people feel frustrated or angry or outraged or that the system is rigged

53:51because there are all sorts of ways, I mean, there are all sorts of ways that I think the system is rigged. I'm a hardcore bit, I'm a hardcore bit-coiner. I think the entire financial system is like, it's a scam. I think taxation is a scam. I don't live in Dubai by accidents. I grew up in a tax free country. I live in a tax free country. I put my money where my mouth is per se. But I can see my home country of the UK is perhaps an even better example than the US because housing is even more unaffordable in the UK than it is in the US. People in Americans earn about 50% more now on average than British people do. Up until I want to say about the mid-2000s, it was pretty equal and then in the last 20 years or so, I mean, the US just salaries kept going up and the UK just UK just flatlined. So people feel that sort of whatever struggle and pain and unaffordable

54:51that Americans are feeling, it actually tends to be even more so in the UK and even more so in Canada, especially in the big cities as far as I know. So I get that squeeze. I mean, I'm a millennial, right? It's not like it's been easy for people in my generation, let alone Gen Z to be able to afford property. If you're in LA, if you're in London, if you're in Toronto, even here in Dubai, I mean, like it's property prices are, they're pretty crazy, right? There are so many multiples, you know, 10 times, 12 times, 15 times the average salary. So I totally understand the frustrations. I understand people's frustration with the medical system, especially in the USA, but in the UK too, people's frustration with the education system, people's frustration with the big pharma, big food, all of these things. Like I get the frustrations and I share, I share many of the frustrations just from a, just from a different angle. And the way that I diagnose the problem and the solutions

55:55I propose or that you may propose are very different to what a democratic socialist, for example, may propose. I had a democratic socialist on my podcast not so long ago, you know, earlier they see her and it was, it was a very interesting conversation because we, we agreed actually on a lot of the problems. But when it came to the solutions, in my view, I thought most of the proposed solutions will just aggravate the problems and make them even worse, rather than, rather than fix them. And like yourself, I don't have, I don't know, I don't know if this is how my parents raised me. I don't know if it's genetic coding, but I'm just not an NVS person at all. Like I, I know a few billionaires, you know, I chat with Elon, I've had Elon on my podcast, right? And even having been around ultra, ultra, ultra wealthy people, which I'd never experienced

56:55until maybe the last six or seven years, you know, people worth not just billions, but like tens or hundreds of billions, like unfathomable amounts of money. I can genuinely say I have zero NV for them. And I don't know if I've ever met a billionaire who I think is happier than me. I don't think I have of the, I think maybe I've met six or seven at this point. And I'm not even saying that they're unhappy, but I don't look at their life and what they're doing and what they're going through. And I'm not like, oh yeah, I want, I want all of that or that, that is better than what I have. No, and I think if you're someone who's like in decent health, especially if you have good relationships, you've got decent family around you and friends and so on, and a job you don't like absolutely hate and you don't have like something horrible, horrible going on in your life. And this is probably going to annoy some people, but I genuinely do not think that your average 100, 100, 100 millionaire or billionaire is any happier than your typical lower middle class,

58:03middle class, upper middle class person. I don't think so. They have more stuff. They can buy more things. Sure, they can do more like fancy things, have a nicer car, have a nicer seat on the plane, have a bigger house, have more, but they've got to deal with a ton of crap. They've got to deal with a ton of stuff and beyond the money, a lot of them, their marriage might be a mess. They are children might not like them. They might have lots of health problems, which they can't pay, they can't pay their way through. There's all this stuff that's going on in the background that composes someone's life and well-being, that if you just look at the financial aspect, it doesn't tell the true story. Just like, I mean, look, I'll just make this point even on a bigger scale, maybe in a way more people can relate to it. If it were just about money and economic success, right, then the richest countries would all be the happiest. They'd have the lowest rates of

59:09depression. They'd have the lowest rates of suicide. They'd probably have the most stable households. That's not the case. That's just not the case. It's not like everyone all across poor parts of Africa or India or South Central and South. It's not like, oh, they're all just absolutely miserable and their life is horrible. Everyone in these quote-unquote rich countries, like the USA or the UK or Germany or whatever, oh, they're all super happy. Probably the correlation is probably the opposite. There's a lot of reasons for that. It's kind of interesting when you have people who like to talk as if they'll say that money is not important and so on and they, themselves, will be against capitalism because they think it's materialistic in this. They actually think about what makes a good life. All they see is money. They just look at someone who has lots of money and they make the assumption, oh, that's the person I should be envious of. But actually,

1:00:14if you could really look deeper and you had a better understanding of the things that actually make someone, let me not just say happy. Let me say joyful, having meaning, having purpose, feeling connected to the world. Typically, that's going to come from faith. It's going to come from family and relationships. It's going to come from having decent health. If those things are in place, people can be pretty poor and day-to-day like they'll be happy. It doesn't mean they wouldn't be better off in happier if they had a higher income or more money in the bank, of course they would. But it's really not to be all in end all. Correct. Money makes your life easier for the most part when you're able to cover your basic needs when you're able to afford everything you need or the most of the things that you need and to provide for your family. But that doesn't mean that it fixes everything in your life. And our thing is that not just because, and I want to make this point very clear also, as a capitalist, as someone who advocates for capitalism, being for a

1:01:19capitalism doesn't mean that you're going to defend every billionaire that exists in the world. Some billionaires are corrupt, some have made it to be a billionaire because of the government, and we're opposed to that because we oppose government intervention. However, the statement I want to make very clear is that just because someone is wealthy is not inherently good, but is not inherently bad or evil either. In same with poor people, just because someone is poor, he's not inherently good. Sometimes they're left left to romanticize and to appreciate poor people. Look, yeah, they are struggling. Some of them work really hard. We need to try to, as a community, voluntarily, we need to show our generosity and help them out, help our neighbors, I believe in that. But that doesn't mean that because an individual is poor, that person is simply inherently good, in a billionaire is inherently bad. No, the money that you have doesn't show your quality as a human being, doesn't show your dignity. So that falls to the economy of poor people good and billionaires

1:02:23evil or the other way around is something that we should reject too. And that's why we shouldn't be obsessed with inequality. We shouldn't be obsessed with billionaires quite the opposite. At the end, this is really about freedom, but yes, your bank account or your money is not going to define who you are and you're also not going to make you happy automatically. You need to find happiness, building relationships, making the right choices, being healthy, having a purpose in life. Absolutely. Franklin, what's next for you then? Look, just fighting socialism. We need to save America, we need to save this country. That's something that really concerns me, but that, you know, I fully embraced this country saved my life. I'm just trying to pay it back and as you can tell I love talking in some people like to listen to me. So that's what I'm going to do. Oh, damn, man. And where can people find and follow you online? Look, if they type Franklin Camargo in any social media, they're going to find me. My biggest

1:03:25social media account is Instagram. So it would be cool if they can find me there. That's also where I'm very active, but they can follow me on eggs or TikTok as well. Awesome, man. Oh, you're doing great work, dude. I was watching lots of your videos and, you know, both the English ones and the Spanish ones. And, yeah, man, you talk a lot of sense and you come from a very interesting background and perspective. And I think that people in the USA need to hear that voice. Thank you, brother. I have been calling you for a few years and it's just, it's the American dream to be able to have this conversation. So thank you.

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