Title: Cuba Crisis, Marxism & Automation
Show: Caleb Maupin
Date: 2021-07-13
URL: https://youtu.be/Kh0vejtIEhE
Duration: 27:00

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[00:11] and we are back with the best damn talk show in the world i'm lisa and with my partner john kiriakou 202 521 1320 is the number to call sometimes we take calls during guest segments sometimes we get them sometimes they don't and 105.5 fm am 1390 is what you're listening to if you're listening on a radio which is doubtful i'm just saying most people uh we have plenty of radio listeners yeah we do i'm just saying that radio is a medium john i'm so glad we're on it oh my gosh i i

[00:44] am too you know when when brian and i were doing loud and clear he was he mentioned to me several times how surprised he was that taxi drivers would tell him that they listened to our show so yeah a lot of people do listen on terrestrial radio i noticed that on lyft and uber even ride sharing services when i drive around i just that wasn't a dig on our listenership john there was a dig on radio as a media you know what i'm saying right radio's an uh an old fangled is that a word old because you're gonna have newfangled

[01:16] yes yes it's oldfangled and i again i like it so there we go joining us now great friend of the show smart guy our key correspondent author caleb is joining us hey caleb how you doing today i'm good how about yourself how was how are both of you good thank you thanks for coming back i saw easy rider over the weekend so i am i'm groovy yeah thanks for asking oh that's a bit of a pessimistic kind of new left film from the late 60s right yeah it is one of my

[01:49] favorite movies though yeah a little dark it it sure ends dark oh boy does it man the first time i saw it i was like you've got to be kidding me everybody in the theater was shocked i could tell john oh they hadn't seen it before i'm guessing some of them hadn't because i could just tell there was a parlor over the wow how were the people yeah let's let's talk about something uh happy and fun like the situation in haiti and cuba okay so i was saying earlier on the show

[02:20] we're talking cuba the protests there we're all over the news especially if your news channel of choice is fox they were all over it communist cubia communist cuban communist cuba and what i said was haiti has been having protests for years and they're supported by the us and i think that people are i'm i'm sure things aren't great for the people in cuba but they aren't great for the people in haiti and uh i just think it's a double standard

[02:54] caleb what's your take on what's going on you couldn't have missed this news over the weekend so what's your take on the on do you think it's a double standard oh well it's a couple things but yes i mean people in haiti have been marching and protesting against moise and u.s media said nothing about it until moise got killed um and now all of a sudden you know u.s media is like catching up and letting people know oh yeah there's been this rebellion going on in the country for the past several months uh there's also been massive anti-austerity protests in chile and argentina

[03:24] and we heard nothing about it in u.s media but what's particularly interesting about these recent protests in cuba is that uh you know we heard about them they started and the day they started immediately all kinds of people were out in the streets uh in miami all kinds of people were out in the streets in in new york city and central park and you know the cuban american exile community was out in the streets protesting in solidarity with these protests they were blasted all over the media they're going after bernie sanders

[03:54] how come he doesn't you know he's not you know condemning the cuban government right now the white house has put out a statement you know these people have been in the streets for less than 24 hours and u.s media is in overdrive supporting them plus but here's here's the real catch okay if you know anything about cuba you'll know that there's an economic blockade on cuba and this this is not like this is not like a little thing right if you if you if you make cupcakes in germany and you want to send those cupcakes to the united states you have to sign a

[04:24] document certifying that there is not one ounce of cuban sugar in those cupcakes uh and if you violate that you can lose your ability to export to united states i mean these sanctions on cuba these the economic blockade is very very very serious and especially during covid uh it was particularly hard for cuba to get the medicine it needed and such so there's an economic blockade on cuba and now we have a situation where there's you know some people in the country that feel like the way you know things are being handed out is not good like there's some government mismanagement or whatever so they're

[04:56] protesting um and so now you know all of the all of the anti-castro folks you know that say that they are concerned about the cuban people they're taking to the streets so you'd think they're saying we're concerned about the cuban people uh they don't get you know they don't have the medicine they need and all that you would think they'd be saying so lift that blockade you know like lift that blockade help them get the medicine they need they're protesting because they need medicine they need they need to deal with some food shortages and stuff so let's open up the blockade that is not their message i talked on good authority to people who went to central park and talked to them

[05:27] that was not their message at all they want to toughen up the sanctions they want a a tougher approach to cuba they want to end diplomatic relations between the usa and cuba so they're claiming to support the cuban people while they call for an escalation uh and and making it harder to get the medicine and food supplies and basically exacerbating the very things that these protesters are protesting the whole thing is really really really confused and it looks to me like there's a lot of people in miami that have a bone to bic bone to pick with fidel castro that

[05:58] aren't particularly concerned about the situation on the ground they just want the the commies out of there you know this is old cold war right-wing fanatic folks and uh and they're using this opportunity where they're they're you know there's some division in the country there's some frustration and then there's probably some legit grievances there they're using that uh to feed a foreign policy agenda that's what it looks like to me well let me ask you uh about that too there was a there was a piece in the new york times this morning saying that that biden and the democrats are going to have to tread lightly in florida

[06:29] in light of what's happening in cuba because there are so many cuban um americans and they they sort of trend conservative in in florida but i i'm not sure i believe that i'm not sure that i believe that this is going to be a challenge for the democrats what do you think john just really willing how what does that mean yeah well and and that was part of the problem that i had with this piece lee

[06:59] is that they didn't say how like what is that supposed to mean you can't just throw this idea into the middle of the room and have everybody just nod their heads if this is a legitimate uprising if this is the beginning of a legitimate revolution in cuba well then that's that's good for everybody except maybe the communist party's leadership but you know treading lightly no what you do is you make an announcement that you want the best for the cuban people

[07:31] sorry well indeed but everything surrounding cuba is just so politically loaded in the united states another thing i might add is you know in response to these protests uh the cuban communist party they called on all of their supporters to pour into the streets and the protests you know supporting the communist party supporting the president have been like 10 times as big as the protests opposing them and u.s media is pretty silent on that um and it's particularly interesting because this this shows one of the political strengths

[08:01] of the cuban communist party which is that you know back in the old soviet union the way they dealt with dissidents was they generally just ignored them until they created enough of the problem that they were just kind of dragged away and disappeared in the middle of the night um right and that created an atmosphere where average people were afraid to get involved in politics right but in cuba especially starting in the 80s during what they called the rectification campaign they had the opposite approach when there'd be somebody that was was spouting anti-communism or spouting pro-american sentiments they would actually mobilize their

[08:32] supporters to go debate the person and argue with them and they were they kind of brought the population into the political process as their response and that has been a lot of their strength is that you know they have these these neighborhood committees the committee to defend the revolution the cdr every building every apartment building every every every block and every neighborhood is very well organized and i almost wonder i i don't i wouldn't call this a full-blown color revolution because i don't i don't think they have the strength on the ground to actually pull this off i always feel like this is a test run

[09:02] this is this is like how much can we make the cuban communists miserable let's see how far we can push it that's what i think this is i i agree completely this is not a revolution i think it's a test run as well yeah and obviously and that's why i point out the hypocrisy well you know we noticed this during the uh summit between putin and biden everyone who was on the show uh and and us caleb all thought that the press

[09:32] was so much more rabid that's the word i'll use john is that fair were they rabid yeah i don't think technically there was no foam there was no phone close oh yeah we get the idea the press was more rabid about that about uh opposing putin then biden himself was and uh now we see to no one's surprise exactly you know fox is i literally got four alerts in a few hours about this over the weekend john

[10:04] from fox yep and you would have thought it was on like this is it you know revolution's here and then i looked at the footage and i'm like there's some people protesting but as you're pointing out caleb the the pro cat the pro communist party i would almost say procaster that'd be tricky but the pro-communist party protests are significantly bigger so of course that will be used to prove that it's a police state right caleb

[10:34] that they're only out because they're afraid yeah i mean that'll be the response that's the standard analysis and i mean i'll tell you as somebody who has has been to many countries that are described as authoritarian by the u.s leaders i mean that's ridiculous i mean the notion that all these people are just out there because you know the government made them and if they don't go out they'll be you know killed and dragged into a prison camp or something let's be realistic okay i mean cuba doesn't have the level of freedom of speech that we have in the united states etc there are human rights concerns but to make the claim that all these people

[11:06] are demonstrating at the point of a gun i think that's pretty absurd yeah i agree i agree it's absurd and and this is a two-day event you know just like the demonstrations in nicaragua i've been following these demonstrations in nicaragua they started off because because of a shortfall in the social security system and they uh the government raised the price of bread and you know if you're poor and the price of bread goes up that's a pretty big deal but this social security thing was a

[11:36] very big problem and it began to weaken the government of daniel ortega so the election comes up there's supposed to be an election this year and so far eight opposition leaders that is the leaders of eight opposition parties so far have been arrested and imprisoned so now there's nobody to run against ortega now to me that necessitates a real honest-to-god uprising

[12:07] but in cuba i think you're right this is a test run they're going to gauge the government's reaction the government if they're smart they're going to try to institute some reforms and then we see what happens six months from now yeah i i think you're right um and you know the cuban president has met with some of the protesters already and uh we shall see what's going on here you know i don't know how many times i've heard that the cuban government was about to fall in my life i mean

[12:37] fidel castro tripped a a decade or so ago and they said it was over and then fidel castro actually died and then they said it was over and then they implemented some economic reforms where you know some cab drivers had to go get a new job or something and then they said it was over and i mean i'm just i've heard it's gonna it's about to fall the cuban government's been about to fall in my whole life yeah absolutely true okay now let's get let's get into a slightly heavy topic caleb it's kind of like the chinese economy yeah okay yeah it is and

[13:09] and this actually sort of relates to that in the sense that let's talk about capitalism communism and automation that idea uh so for a long time one of the arguments that that pro free market people would make is that there was a effect of where when new technology would come some people uh would say well that's getting rid of jobs so for instance we used to have elevator

[13:41] operators all operators were operated by a person then we got automatic elevators and and again that was a long time you know 100 years ago something like that and and people would make more than that actually if i think about i wasn't around but what people who are pro free market would say is look the elevator operator was replaced but there are new jobs in manufacturing

[14:12] for instance automatic elevators and so on and so forth now and a friend of mine said this a while ago uh a friend of mine had been reading marks and she hadn't read marx before and she was a a liberal democrat liberal liberal but in progressive and she said it's interesting reading marx she said because as an economist i don't know i don't think he's very good but as a futurist he was spot on with a

[14:42] lot of stuff and the the situation marx described that would evolve that's actually come to pass and now we're at a point i think with automation even tucker carlson another story there john about yeah we haven't talked about that we even talked about that yeah but but even tucker carlson came out about a year or so ago and said that self-driving trucks for instance are going to kill the trucking industry in a way just won't recover from and

[15:14] even the machines are being built by other machines now john that's what's that that is what's happening yeah so there's no replacement theory so again it's a big broad topic caleb what's your take on it well it's interesting because a lot of people have kind of a caricature of marxism and socialism in their head now they have this idea that you know socialist communists they're people who think that you know some people are rich and some people are poor and this is unfair uh and it's just not fair and we want to make everybody equal

[15:45] or something no actually people have been saying that for a long time uh you know you can go back to spartacus and ancient rome i mean you know plato's republic there's nothing new about that what made marxism unique was that marxism had a particular analysis of history right the history is like a train speeding forward you have hunter-gatherer civilization eventually get the slave empires of greece and rome and egypt and mesopotamia and eventually you get feudalism and out of feudalism comes capitalism and capitalism will eventually be replaced with this higher mode of

[16:16] production called socialism and eventually socialism gives way to this higher even higher mode of production called communism which is a world of vast material abundance where there's so much so much wealth being created and so little human labor is necessary uh that everyone can kind of just take what they need and do what they feel like doing uh mark said that this you know this higher stage of communism would be a society where labor is life's prime want rather than a necessity meaning people work because they feel like it um but the main point that marx makes

[16:46] about capitalism is that capitalism is unstable and capitalism is irrational because the capitalist is constantly driving to produce as many goods as he can but pay as little as he possibly can to do it he wants to lower his production costs and maximize his profits and the result of that is that the worker who is also the consumer can't buy back the product that he produces and pretty soon you have a glut in the market a glut of over production um and karl marx talks about this

[17:18] problem of overproduction uh and he also talks about how technological leaps exacerbate it with what he called the tendency of the falling rate of profit and that uh that when you have a big technological leap uh the result is a massive economic crisis and if you look at the history of the 20th century it pretty well panned out world war one came after some great big technological leaps that resulted in some pretty big economic crises world war ii came after you know henry ford and his great assembly line innovations that really changed the way

[17:49] factory production worked and the result was uh the great depression which ultimately led to world war ii and that the scary thing about this marxist understanding which you know no one says this stuff better than jack ma by the way the ceo of alibaba the billionaire he goes around explaining this uh you know the the tech optimism mixed in with the tech concerns uh you know the scary thing about it is that we're living in the middle of the biggest technological leap in a long time uh you know i mean we have not seen

[18:19] anything like this 3d printers artificial intelligence i mean this is this is astronomical and the result is going to be millions and millions of people who have no place at the assembly line around the world there's going to be less and less of a demand for workers there's going to be increased poverty and there's going to be an increased amount of monopolistic stagnation as a few big corporations uh survive during the economic turmoil and the rest kind of go under um and this is you know this is what marks analyzed

[18:50] capitalism this is the process of capitalism and decay the capitalist wants to revolutionize technology and the result is a problem and the argument is that in a rational society something like self-driving cars would be a good thing i mean there's less work for everybody to do but only under capitalism where the worker can only survive so long as he sells his labor to a boss under capitalism abundance and efficiency creates poverty and getting rid of that and having a rationally organized economy where profits are not in command but there's a state central plan dictating production can lead to an

[19:22] uninterrupted state of growth and if you look at china you know they do have a market sector but at the end of the day it's the chinese communist party that's in charge not the market i mean you know they the private companies they go to them and say you do this and they do it and they've been able to have a pretty long string of economic growth because they're not subject to the irrationality of the boom bust cycle and over production and the tendency of the falling rate of profit etc because they've overcome the rule of profits they're able to have longer growth that's marxism and that's something that many people don't understand

[19:53] interesting yeah no i i agree i agree with caleb's uh analysis i i think you're exactly right and something that that not a lot of people either understand or have put a great deal of thought into but i think you've hit it on the head so let me say this you know what would be great john think about this we need to get mark frost and caleb on at the same time oh that's a good idea because you know this goes to the point and because i don't agree with everything

[20:23] caleb's saying but it's not my job to come on and bicker with everybody and but i said it before and i'll say it again the dude is smart and the point he's and i also don't disagree with everything he's saying and i think when he points out the subject ma saying for instance or the thing i'll relate to and tell me if i'm wrong to relate it to he's no longer you know he's not going to be the mayor of new york but andrew yang bringing up a guaranteed income for instance guaranteed income the one of the reasons

[20:55] i think it actually needs to be considered now is the technological reasons that people like jackman and and and you and me and a lot of people we're talking about because of this great technological leap so first off do you do you think relating uh as a sort of modern solution to the modern problem of technology something like a guaranteed basic income uh makes you know is is an idea that more and more people

[21:26] will be thinking about talking about debating caleb well look i am not opposed to universal basic income but there are a number of different models of it that have been drawn up i mean there's not just one theory of it and you know one concern that i have about universal basic income is that you know some of the folks who are the biggest advocates of it have been advocates of neo-liberal economics milton friedman even wrote about the need for a universal basic income not because he thought that everyone should get an income but he said look if we have to have a welfare state

[21:56] should we have a government department of welfare and a government department of unemployment insurance and you know food stamps and or why don't we just have everybody everyone no matter what your job situation how much or what your life is you get an automatic bank transfer a thousand bucks a month and then we can lay off all the people in the department of labor and all the people in the uh the department of agriculture and all the people in the in the welfare departments get rid of all those good-paying government jobs that are you know costing the taxpayer too much and everyone just gets a bank transfer

[22:26] and then we can carry out mass austerity and shrink the size of the government and the economic consequences of that would be quite concerning i mean if you think about how many people are involved in administering the welfare state and they're all working for a living and they're all you know getting a decent paycheck and if you took that out of the economy and that you know you took that out right and it was just kind of well everyone gets an automatic transfer of 10 000 a month no questions asked um i think you know there could potentially be an issue and the other thing that concerns me right so if you're going to get rid of food stamps you're going to

[22:57] get rid of you know you know section 8 for rent you're going to get rid of all of that and everyone just gets a bank transfer all it takes is one state to say hey why should convicted pedophiles get you know a thousand dollars a month and then they pass a law that says okay well you know convicted pedophiles don't get it you know and then it's gone and then we've got thousands of convicted pedophiles with no income whatsoever who are out on the streets starving and potentially rioting and once you do it to them then you can do it to anyone who's been convicted of a violent crime and then you can do it to anyone who

[23:28] doesn't pay their taxes and pretty soon you're going to have a mob of people who don't have anything nothing and that concerns me i i there are some concerns about it but the premise that everyone gets a basic income i'm not opposed to it just depends how you implement it many different models have been proposed yeah yeah you know it's funny too that uh that that argument didn't fly the universal basic basic universal income argument didn't fly in the new york mayoral race when yang brought it up uh just after he announced his uh

[23:58] his candidacy the the new york times thought it was a great idea and said that he could actually win this thing right there was a fawning tribute to him about six months ago and i think he ended up coming in what fourth people just weren't buying into it well i think andrew yang had the opposite problem in the new york election is that he sounded like a boring normal politician i thought who is this guy you know i mean when he was running for president he was you know the math hats and the wild ideas and stuff and i heard him in new york i thought this just sounds like you know another bill de blasio i mean

[24:30] he was totally uninteresting if he had if he had made the universal basic income and that more part of his campaign i think he would have done better yeah like i said to me i think it's interesting i think it's gonna be something that people i think the point you're making caleb is right on there are different variants and that's why i think john it's going to be debated for you know it's they're going to try to figure out it should be debated yeah i agree with you it should be debated you don't have to like it but we should be talking about it and by the way i remember the director john

[25:00] carpenter in 1974 directed a very scary movie about the pedophile riots of 2022. no he didn't i just made that up but but you get a picture of john can't you okay hey caleb we're almost out of time let me ask you this would you be open to having a i don't like the word debate because i don't want people bickering conversation conversation with a libertarian economist mark frost yes okay john i think caleb and mark had to debate who would

[25:31] win answer the audience yeah you know what that that that's right the audience that's right no i really mean it yeah there's two very smart very reasonable people that we like that'd be great yes hey hey caleb tell people what you're working on do you have anything coming up that people should be looking out for either in books or on rt or wherever well my latest book bread tube serves imperialism which is a critique of this left-wing youtube community is the is the number one new release on amazon.com in the category of anarchism

[26:02] right now i've never had a book sell so well so if people want to see uh hear a critique from an actual marxist of these liberal uh internet commentators they should check out my new book bread tube serves imperialism it's getting good reviews excellent hey caleb that's been congratulations by the way that's fantastic and just shows the capitalism works because your book's very successful i'm just messing with you okay cattle muffins joining us thanks again to mark frost hey rod let's seriously let's set up this discussion because i think it would be

[26:32] john i really mean it right that'd be great no i think it's a terrific idea there we go and thanks to our interpreter producer rod thanks to the great saul and thanks for all the great calls today brave ingrid grief and owl killer we'll be back tomorrow i'm liz stranahan with my partner john kiriakou this is the back story dig it

[27:11] you
