Speaker 1: Welcome The Money and Wealth with John Hobryant, a production
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey,
Speaker 1: everybody is John Hope Bryant And this is the Money
Speaker 1: in Wealth podcast series on iHeartRadio and Black Effect Network,
Speaker 1: and today is a special episode. It is the case
Speaker 1: for good capitalism and to really unpack what a lot
Speaker 1: of people are saying about capitalism and socialism and communism,
Speaker 1: wealth opportunity and why Marek keeps getting this conversation absolutely wrong.
Speaker 1: Today is one of those episodes where there's no guess.
Speaker 1: It's just me, So you're stuck with me for the
Speaker 1: next forty five minutes or so as I began to
Speaker 1: unpack something that I write about in my best selling book. Now,
Speaker 1: thanks to all of you who've made this book number
Speaker 1: one in three different categories Capitalism for All, which is
Speaker 1: inclusive economics in the future, Proofing of America Forwards. Michael
Speaker 1: Milkin ed Bashan and Andrew Young and bashor Andrew Young
Speaker 1: together to get those three people on the same page
Speaker 1: just tough. So give it a read because it just
Speaker 1: might be the equilibrium that we all seek for this
Speaker 1: very important conversation. Anyway, I think I've qualified at this
Speaker 1: moment in time to speak on this complicated conversation in
Speaker 1: a way that I think will resonate with you that
Speaker 1: you will see and feel as fair and equitable and respectful,
Speaker 1: but direct, which is my style.
Speaker 2: So let's get into this. It's just me today.
Speaker 1: I think we're living through one of the most important
Speaker 1: economic conversations of our lifetime. Actually on the two hundred
Speaker 1: and fiftieth anniversary of America itself. I think it's really
Speaker 1: a referendum on who we want to be when we
Speaker 1: grow up as a country, whether we want to adhere
Speaker 1: to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and all
Speaker 1: the things that makes this country aspirationally great, and whether
Speaker 1: we're going to be light on the heel for the
Speaker 1: rest of the world going forward as we have been,
Speaker 1: or whether we're going to fall backwards because we began
Speaker 1: to think and act small. And whether you recognize it
Speaker 1: or not, you cannot be You've never had a leader
Speaker 1: of the free world the superpower that wasn't the economic
Speaker 1: leader at the same time. That just never happened, or
Speaker 1: any phrase another way. It's always been that the superpower
Speaker 1: was also the economic power. And I write in this
Speaker 1: book Capitalism for all, how I prescribe how America can
Speaker 1: continue to be the superpower and two ordred pages of
Speaker 1: just math. To quote my friend Melody Hobson, I like
Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion. So read the book.
Speaker 1: Write a review online after you read the book. I'm
Speaker 1: not telling you what to write. Write what you feel.
Speaker 1: I think you'll find that the sixty or so reviews
Speaker 1: that are already up in the short time the book
Speaker 1: has been out are all basically just write about five
Speaker 1: star and these are people who were surprised that they
Speaker 1: liked the book. Anyway, let's get into this and let
Speaker 1: me unpack this directly with you on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: you'll tell me in the social media comments and questions
Speaker 1: whether you want me to continue this as a series
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 2: I also plan on doing some.
Speaker 1: Live discussions on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn as well, so
Speaker 1: I can talk to you in real time.
Speaker 2: Okay, but I can't talk.
Speaker 1: I can't unpack that like I can unpack it here
Speaker 1: on this podcast in a structured way. So everywhere I
Speaker 1: turn these days, people are talking about what they think
Speaker 1: is capitalism and a lot of frustrations tied to it,
Speaker 1: which I actually I understand and with it. They're talking
Speaker 1: about socialism and communism and billionaires. Okay, but before I
Speaker 1: get into all that, let me lay some ground rules
Speaker 1: right up front. In the first five minutes of this podcast,
Speaker 1: a lot of my friends and people in communities I
Speaker 1: care about say I hate rich people. My response, no,
Speaker 1: you don't. You hate rich people until you become rich.
Speaker 1: What you hate is a game system. What you hate
Speaker 1: is a system that no matter how hard you work,
Speaker 1: no matter how hard you hustle, you can't seem to
Speaker 1: get ahead. That you see some half wit on television
Speaker 1: that you believe strongly is half as intelligent as you
Speaker 1: and works half as hard as you do, and they're
Speaker 1: a billionaire or a multimillionaire, and it just looks like
Speaker 1: a rigged game. And so you throw your hands up.
Speaker 1: You say, this whole thing is corrupt. The system is rigged,
Speaker 1: the system is gamed. It's a game system, and as
Speaker 1: a result, you hate it. You don't hate rich people.
Speaker 1: You hate rich people until you become rich. So let
Speaker 1: me help you ungain the system. Let me help you
Speaker 1: unrig the system by teaching you how this system works.
Speaker 1: Because we don't need less rich people, We need more
Speaker 1: of them, and we need them to include you because
Speaker 1: you will be responsible, You will be caring, You will
Speaker 1: do well and do good, You will prosper and then
Speaker 1: make sure the latter is left down for those that
Speaker 1: come but beyond behind you to lift them up too.
Speaker 1: That is the legacy of this country. Up from Nothing.
Speaker 1: That was my fifth book. I believe up from Nothing,
Speaker 1: and so I believe financial literacy is the civil rights
Speaker 1: issue with this generation. When you know better, you do better.
Speaker 1: As an old Southern saying, no matter how much I
Speaker 1: love you, my son or my daughter, if I don't
Speaker 1: have wisdom, all I can give you is my own ignorance,
Speaker 1: And so out of love, we pass down bad habits
Speaker 1: from generation to generation, out of love because of what
Speaker 1: we don't know. That we don't know that's killing us
Speaker 1: what we think we know. So let's knock it off
Speaker 1: with the bad advice. The reality is that even if
Speaker 1: you want a distribute money like a socialist, you're the
Speaker 1: first collected like a capitalist. Now think about that. You're
Speaker 1: listening to this podcast on a device that the government
Speaker 1: did not buy for you. I can say that with
Speaker 1: confidence unless you're listening to it is from some communist
Speaker 1: country and we are big all around the world, six continents,
Speaker 1: So maybe you are, but entirely it's entirely likely, and
Speaker 1: the overwhelming likelihood is you're listening to this from some
Speaker 1: place where you have some level of relative freedom, and
Speaker 1: you're engaging in free enterprise, and you are exchanging your
Speaker 1: human capital, your talents as a worker at the very least,
Speaker 1: or as a gig worker, or as a hustler, or
Speaker 1: as an uber driver or whatever, a lift driver, or
Speaker 1: as a structured employee hourly or a salaried employee. You're
Speaker 1: trading that talent, that gift for a paycheck for compensation.
Speaker 1: You are trading your human capital for money, just real talk.
Speaker 1: And you're using that money to pay your bills, to
Speaker 1: pay your car note, to pay your rent, to pay
Speaker 1: your mortgage, to pay your light bill, to pay your
Speaker 1: gas which is increasingly going up, to pay for your
Speaker 1: school fees. I mean, those kids are not being taken
Speaker 1: care of at school. I'm gonna get to this because
Speaker 1: this is actually a little bit of a socialist vibe.
Speaker 2: I'll explain that.
Speaker 1: But if you're in Africa, you're paying school fees directly
Speaker 1: to the provider in many cases, so that's like a
Speaker 1: literal transact translations transaction. That's not socialism. We have a
Speaker 1: little bit of socialism in America, actually, but every country
Speaker 1: has a little bit of socialism, sharn pack. But if
Speaker 1: you're paying somebody cut your hair, they're not cutting your
Speaker 1: hair for free. You pay somebody to take care of
Speaker 1: your your kids in daycare. They're not taking care of
Speaker 1: your your kids watching them for free. They're too bad,
Speaker 1: too much of a pain in the kazanga beans to
Speaker 1: watch them for free. That's just not there unless as
Speaker 1: your grandmother or your cousin or something that's it's not
Speaker 1: their role in life. So you're transferring the opportunity for
Speaker 1: a fee, the opportunity to take care of your kids
Speaker 1: for a fee.
Speaker 2: They're not doing it for free.
Speaker 1: So just talk like from the time you get up
Speaker 1: in the morning to the time you go to bed
Speaker 1: at night, your life is a series of financial transactions.
Speaker 1: You can't even watch or listen to this podcast without
Speaker 1: subscription fees, acquisition costs, the phone, the smartphone, the iPad,
Speaker 1: the car you're listening to, the radio, whatever it is
Speaker 1: you're consuming this with. So let's just understand that financial
Speaker 1: literacy is a civil rights issue.
Speaker 2: Of this generation.
Speaker 1: Let's understand that even the Bible talks about money more
Speaker 1: than anything else, more than two thousand references. Let's understand
Speaker 1: that the disciples of Jesus were overwhelmingly business people. Yeah
Speaker 1: you heard it right from me here.
Speaker 2: Check it out.
Speaker 1: They weren't profits even though they were largely business people.
Speaker 1: They had phishing companies, they had employees, they had infrastructure.
Speaker 2: It wasn't casual.
Speaker 1: He wanted people around him who knew what they were doing,
Speaker 1: who can organize themselves. So let's get into this and
Speaker 1: stop arguing over stupid stuff. We shouldn't destroy capitalism. We
Speaker 1: should promote good capitalism, good capitalism, and get this out
Speaker 1: of the way. So good capitalism where is where I
Speaker 1: benefit and you benefit more so? Creating a comb as
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur that gets the naps out of hair all right,
Speaker 1: straightens or whatever. That comb which I manufactured for two dollars,
Speaker 1: and I retail for let's say seven dollars, which is
Speaker 1: the cost of production plus retailing marketing, administration, et cetera,
Speaker 1: plus a profit margin, and then I sell that comb
Speaker 1: for again seven eight dollars. You feel that it's worth
Speaker 1: eight dollars or ten dollars to unnap your hair. Fair
Speaker 1: change is no robbery. There's good capitalism right there, where
Speaker 1: I benefit and you benefit more. Bad capitalism of capitalism
Speaker 1: is where I benefit you pay a price for it.
Speaker 1: Drug dealing and murder and mayhem for fear and human
Speaker 1: trafficking and all kinds of crazy stuff, subprime mortgages, a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that has done from Wall Street and
Speaker 1: Main Street can be described as bad capitalism. Or as
Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton once told me, he said, John, is
Speaker 1: hard to get someone to greet to the truth when
Speaker 1: the lie is paying their paycheck. Let's again deal with
Speaker 1: with the reality of the matter that this system is
Speaker 1: all around us, and we need to understand how to
Speaker 1: control master sorry, this system, because if it's not working,
Speaker 1: if you're not working it, it's working you. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's not get angry, let's not get upset, let's not
Speaker 1: tear it down. Let's refine it and make it better.
Speaker 1: Because I can't help anybody broke, you can't help anybody poor.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between being broken being poor. I'm starting
Speaker 1: to preach to be broke is economic, but to be
Speaker 1: poor is the disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition
Speaker 1: of your spirit, and you must vow never ever ever
Speaker 1: to be poor again. Folks joked and laughed at me
Speaker 1: when I brought bankers into the inner city with bankers
Speaker 1: bus tours in the nineties after our founded Operation Open
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. In South Central LA. The nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: even the early two thousands, we had the biggest bus
Speaker 1: tour was twelve of these chartered buses with police escorts.
Speaker 1: And I treated it like it was a Third World
Speaker 1: country at South Central LA, Washington DC, different places in
Speaker 1: Oakland where we did these tours. Because if you hang
Speaker 1: around nine broke people, you'll be the tenth. I don't
Speaker 1: care how smart you are. No one has capital, and
Speaker 1: so these communities have drug dealers and well check cashers,
Speaker 1: pay daylin lenders, rental owned stores, title lenders, liquor stores, pawnshops,
Speaker 1: drug dealers, gangsters, and you're dying at sixty one years
Speaker 1: of age because you're stressed out. Because people in a
Speaker 1: five hundred credit scord neighborhood die at sixty one years
Speaker 1: of age. Did you know that My hope financial one
Speaker 1: is index. Go to operations website, putting your zip code.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how you live in and by the way,
Speaker 1: for every fifty point increase in your credit score, you
Speaker 1: live about another five years. So if you get to
Speaker 1: your credit score above seven hundred, you live to eighty
Speaker 1: one years of age on average. And we've z We've
Speaker 1: mapped every ZiT code out in America. Now again, think
Speaker 1: about that fifteen minutes away from the hood where we
Speaker 1: are rejecting capitalism but are completely involved in hustling, which
Speaker 1: is capitalism, but without the structure, without the incentives, without
Speaker 1: the legal nature of it, without the ability to compound.
Speaker 1: Because there's a difference between making money and building wealth.
Speaker 1: You make money during the day and income. You build
Speaker 1: wealth in your sleep. Things I keep trying to teach
Speaker 1: you stocks, investing, stocks, bonds, education, business is real estate,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And as your stress increases in these underserved communities,
Speaker 1: you have a surviving mindset surviving mindset versus a winning
Speaker 1: mindset or a builder's mindset, and winners are builders. I
Speaker 1: need you to be a builder, and a builder's mindset
Speaker 1: is optimistic. I can't guarantee the being positive it's gonna
Speaker 1: make you succeed, but I absolutely guarantee that being negative
Speaker 1: is going to ultimately make you fail, and that negativity
Speaker 1: also is going to cause you your health to fail
Speaker 1: because of thoughts are things. So you're gonna be broke,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be Frustrated're gonna be depressed and be arguing
Speaker 1: with your wife or your husband about money. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have anxiety and have a heart attack or whatever, high pertension,
Speaker 1: eating bad food. Also in these communities I love I
Speaker 1: grew up in, and you're gonna drop dead on average
Speaker 1: of sixty one but fifteen minutes away, whether a credit
Speaker 1: score is seven hundred plus two, parent households, restaurants, grassy areas, calmness,
Speaker 1: proper businesses, stress, more education, more aspiration, more ownership, you
Speaker 1: live to eighty one ninety one years of age. Don't
Speaker 1: trust me, look at the data. So let's start winning.
Speaker 1: Because with the rules of published and the plain fullers level,
Speaker 1: we kill it. Professional sports we kill it, the arts,
Speaker 1: we kill it. I'm talking about black people now, faith
Speaker 1: we kill it. Kill it means we've mastered it and
Speaker 1: scaled it. Politics from slavery to the President of the
Speaker 1: United States of America, as in President Barack Obama, who
Speaker 1: just launched his Beautiful Library with his wife Michelle in Chicago.
Speaker 1: He's a living legacies. But we live at a capitalist democracy.
Speaker 1: That's right, I said it. And if you don't believe that,
Speaker 1: look at recent elections and what's driving this whole situation.
Speaker 1: Look at what's driving the conversation right now in this country.
Speaker 1: Look who really has the power capitalists owners. Look at
Speaker 1: the name. Think about the household names here and around
Speaker 1: the world. Okay, you used to be politicians now as
Speaker 1: business people, but they don't look like us, they don't
Speaker 1: have our pedigree. I was just at a meeting last
Speaker 1: week and I was the only black male founder, entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: CEO chairman up from nothing, formerly homeless, you know, from
Speaker 1: the hood, in the whole group. Not because they don't
Speaker 1: want us there. They invited me, but there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of billionaires, multi millionaire CEOs, et cetera. But we're just
Speaker 1: not sign up for this movement at scale with the
Speaker 1: tools needed to sit at the table. And I want
Speaker 1: to expand the table and add a chair. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm trying to teach you how this game works. Because
Speaker 1: Forbes just made me a Forbes two fifty with one
Speaker 1: of the Forbes two hundred fifty greatest living self made Americans.
Speaker 1: So they say, on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of American Oprah Winfrey, who I can say now is
Speaker 1: a friend and she's amazing, is number one on that list.
Speaker 1: And number one of the greatest histori list of self
Speaker 1: made Americans is President Abraham Lincoln. So what a trajectory
Speaker 1: from Abraham Lincoln to Oprah Winfrey. And if she can
Speaker 1: do it, you can do it. If I can do it,
Speaker 1: you can do it too. Legally. And it's about it's
Speaker 1: not about networth, it's about distance travel, right, it's the arc,
Speaker 1: and it's proof of concept that this stuff works. My success,
Speaker 1: Oprah success, all the other people on that list success
Speaker 1: is proof that this works and it could work for you.
Speaker 1: And my book is a roadmap capitalism for all. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. Socialism, communism, billionaires, taxes, wealth, inequality,
Speaker 1: the rich, the poor.
Speaker 2: Everybody seems to have an opinion.
Speaker 1: Very few people define the words they're using today. We're
Speaker 1: going to define all of this and unpack it for you.
Speaker 1: Because we want to only argue about the solutions. We
Speaker 1: ought to just understand the problem. We shouldn't be admiring
Speaker 1: the problem or debating stupid stuff, and I believe America
Speaker 1: is actually getting this conversation wrong. So let's first talk
Speaker 1: about why people are so angry?
Speaker 2: Right, let me.
Speaker 1: Just say, right off the bat as I tell my
Speaker 1: wealthy and rich, my rich and my wealthy and uber
Speaker 1: wealthy friends, including billionaires, when they ask me why this
Speaker 1: movement of people talking about socialism and why people so
Speaker 1: angry at me them, I tell them that folks have
Speaker 1: a right to be angry, a right to be frustrated.
Speaker 1: The system has not worked for them, and capitalism and
Speaker 1: capitalists have done a crappy job of marketing itself and
Speaker 1: its virtues to the least of these God's children, a
Speaker 1: crappy job of making sure that the ladder of opportunity
Speaker 1: reaches the bottom and people can climb up with their
Speaker 1: own effort.
Speaker 2: At the top.
Speaker 1: People I know who are from the hood and the
Speaker 1: hood adjacent, who want success, believing the James Brown version
Speaker 1: of affirmative action, open the door. I'll get it myself.
Speaker 1: They're not asking for handouts, they're asking for a hand up.
Speaker 1: But you can't boots your up yourself without shoelaces. So
Speaker 1: I tell my friends, you know, you guys got to
Speaker 1: do a better job of doing something other than celebrating yourself,
Speaker 1: and how great this is supposed to great. The system is,
Speaker 1: we got a K shaped economy and somebody just told
Speaker 1: me they might have turned it might have turned into
Speaker 1: an E shaped economy. In other words, the E shaped
Speaker 1: economy is worse because there's these like these ledges that
Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. The kse shaped economy, Lisa is an
Speaker 1: angle that you might be able to rocket up, but
Speaker 1: it should be a V shaped economy, where V means
Speaker 1: victory at some point. So people are rightly so frustrated
Speaker 1: inflations through the roof. You might, by the way, understand
Speaker 1: inflation came from COVID because it's never been a response
Speaker 1: by the government to anything in the history of the
Speaker 1: world before COVID with the T in front of it,
Speaker 1: as in trillion. Never It's been hundreds of millions and billions,
Speaker 1: the global economic crisis of two thousand and the mortg
Speaker 1: crisis of two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: But this was billions, and it wasn't one billion, it
Speaker 1: was two, it wasn't two, three, four five billion. Congress
Speaker 1: did all up. You're talking about six seven eight billion,
Speaker 1: a billion and a half of that was probably too much.
Speaker 1: But no, there was no manual you put off the
Speaker 1: shelf that said here's how you solve COVID or some
Speaker 1: global economic not economic crisis, how how you respond to
Speaker 1: a pandemic. The last pandemic we had was a Spanish
Speaker 1: flu in the world. It was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five plus years ago. There was no manuals and it
Speaker 1: was on manual now. So the whole economy just seized up.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like, we forget this more.
Speaker 1: We're so traumatized, we don't want to remember it. But
Speaker 1: that's where the inflation came from. Because the government poured
Speaker 1: all this money over the free that freezed up gears,
Speaker 1: the locked up gears of the economy from big companies
Speaker 1: all the way down to your house. When they send
Speaker 1: you a check for a couple thousand dollars, remember that, Well,
Speaker 1: that has to be paid back people. It has to
Speaker 1: be flushed to the system that causes inflation. You can
Speaker 1: bind that, and I mean, I'm a surprise, frankly, I'm
Speaker 1: surprised inflation is not more like seven eight percent given
Speaker 1: what we went through. And that just shows how dynamic
Speaker 1: this economy is. And how amazing we are that we
Speaker 1: recover from that. But people just forget. They want to
Speaker 1: blame it on a president or something and come on,
Speaker 1: knock it off. That was bipartisan stimulus money. Both Republicans
Speaker 1: and Democrat gave that money during the pandemic, and presidents
Speaker 1: from both parties contributed to this whole situation. It's just
Speaker 1: with an unfortunate situation with no good answer. I understand
Speaker 1: the concerns. I understand that people got too much month
Speaker 1: at the end of their money and they're using credit
Speaker 1: cards to get buy with their standard of living. I
Speaker 1: understand the student loans are driving them crazy. I understand
Speaker 1: you can't you can't buy a house. The interest rates
Speaker 1: are too high because the interest rates are high because
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve is trying to stamp out inflation. So
Speaker 1: you cannot have low interest rates without risking high inflation.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to get the interest rates the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 1: But you cannot have low interest rates without triggering high inflation.
Speaker 1: You cannot have higher interest rates without dampening economic activity
Speaker 1: and making things expensive. So buying a house is expensive.
Speaker 1: Buying anything is expensive these days, and it has an
Speaker 1: interest rate attached to it right, and then now you've
Speaker 1: got oil is through the roof. So I mean people
Speaker 1: are really frustrated. Whatever they turn you, affordable housing ain't affordable.
Speaker 1: And I say, a on a purpose. And so wherever
Speaker 1: you turn, you've got too much month at the end
Speaker 1: of your money and you're just not a happy camper,
Speaker 1: and you want somebody to cut you a break. Do
Speaker 1: you want somebody to solve an actual problem in your life?
Speaker 1: So millions of Americans feel left behind. I get it.
Speaker 1: Young people wonder if they can ever own a home
Speaker 1: in California. They're building what they call in Hawaii, ohannas,
Speaker 1: I think, but they're building residences above the garage.
Speaker 2: And the.
Speaker 1: Chief of Sabrachel told me, because she lives there still,
Speaker 1: that they're getting city, county, state government permits to build
Speaker 1: a living unit over the garage so that the kids
Speaker 1: can stay there, the seniors, the mothers and fathers can
Speaker 1: stay there. I think it's actually a pretty innovative idea.
Speaker 1: And I love how entrepreneurs and creative thinking and solve problems.
Speaker 1: I love how crisis requires us to think outside the box.
Speaker 1: And the housing crisis required California to come up with
Speaker 1: this cool idea, probably borrowed from my friends in Hawaii. Anyway,
Speaker 1: minions of Americans just don't know if they can ever
Speaker 1: young people, if they're gonna have ever own a home. That's
Speaker 1: the number one you build wealth in America's home ownership
Speaker 1: families working two jobs right. Healthcare is expensive, Inflation hurts,
Speaker 1: college debt just lingers like a noose around your neck.
Speaker 1: Many people feel the system isn't working for them. So
Speaker 1: here's the important point. Those feelings, as I said, are real.
Speaker 1: People aren't stupid, they're frustrated. But frustration does and automatically
Speaker 1: produce wisdom. Wisdom comes from experiences and time. So we
Speaker 1: need you to get your stripes and your achievements and
Speaker 1: your your wounds is where your wisdom comes from, and
Speaker 1: your stripes, your activities, your actions is where your achievement
Speaker 1: comes from. And that's how you ultimately know in your gut,
Speaker 1: your intuition, what is the right thing to do going forward.
Speaker 1: Is experience in life. So pain can make us blame
Speaker 1: the wrong thing. But rainbows only follow us storms. You
Speaker 1: cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. But that's
Speaker 1: where we are today. Okay, So now let's define the
Speaker 1: terms of where we are. So like economics one on one,
Speaker 1: So get out a pencil or pen or or your
Speaker 1: smartphone or whatever. Start writing this down. Let me talk
Speaker 1: about capitalism real quickly. I'm giving you these are all
Speaker 1: crib notes because you can be not because because you
Speaker 1: can go in my book Capitalism for All. I've got
Speaker 1: the definitions of all these things in the book. Just
Speaker 1: go to the book as a reference as not. Somebody
Speaker 1: told me it's not to read the book. It's a
Speaker 1: work book, it's an underlining book, is a review books,
Speaker 1: a study book. So let's talk about again crib notes here,
Speaker 1: just the high points as you're listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: going to work or jogging or working out whatever you
Speaker 1: want to get smart.
Speaker 2: Quick and then go deep later.
Speaker 1: Capitalism, private ownership, private investment, private enterprise, competition, innovation, risk,
Speaker 1: reward for that risk. Here's some examples of what capitalism
Speaker 1: has produced up from nothing Apple, I mean, I describe
Speaker 1: it in the book Steve Jobs. He was the son
Speaker 1: of a Jordanian Middle Easian immigrant, so they put the
Speaker 1: kid up to adoption to a wealthy family. Anyway, that
Speaker 1: family bounced out of the adoption of the last minute,
Speaker 1: and the backup family that adopted Steve Jobs was a
Speaker 1: Jobs family that was a white couple, engineer, a couple
Speaker 1: out of Silicon Valley. So Steve Jobs shows up as
Speaker 1: the adopted kit and he walks around the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: he runs into another kid named Wolsnack, Steve Wozniack, who's
Speaker 1: a genius coder. Steve Jobs was an okay coder. He's
Speaker 1: really more of a designer marketer. He's really braiding in
Speaker 1: his own way made technology cool. But it was Wolseniac
Speaker 1: who really wired at the back end anyway. Together in
Speaker 1: the garage, they created what we now know is a
Speaker 1: trade dollar company, multi tree dollar company called Apple, and
Speaker 1: it's changed all of our lives. Apple, Microsoft, Google, FedEx, Amazon, Tesla.
Speaker 1: Even though I've got real problems with that company and
Speaker 1: it's founder of anyway, I got to give credit what
Speaker 1: credit is due.
Speaker 2: There is brilliance there.
Speaker 1: All the black businesses and brands that don't get enough credit,
Speaker 1: Black Enterprise Magazine, Johnson Products. Off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: what Robert Smith is doing now, I mean, just what
Speaker 1: Oprah has created, Just Tyler Perry and Tyler Perry Studios,
Speaker 1: all these industries, all these places, jay Z and his
Speaker 1: wife Beyonce, et cetera. Millions of small businesses, because most
Speaker 1: millionaires is literally the person next door. It's a boring business.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you know that it's about I
Speaker 1: think it's twenty four hundred or twenty five hundred millionaires
Speaker 1: minted every day last year, every day in the world,
Speaker 1: and half of those in the US twelve hundred new
Speaker 1: millionaires a day. And that weren't doing fancy stuff, and
Speaker 1: they weren't doing illegal stuff. These are legal entrepreneurs. They
Speaker 1: were doing normal stuff and doing well and doing good.
Speaker 1: Capitalism mostly and again, you can't even be a philanthropist.
Speaker 1: You can't give it away unless you collected first. But
Speaker 1: here's what it also came out of capitalism. Good capitalism,
Speaker 1: new medicines, new technologies, new jobs, new wealth. Capitalism is
Speaker 1: not perfect, okay. Unchecked capitalism creates monopolies not good, cronyism
Speaker 1: not good, greed not good, abuse horrible, not good, Excessive
Speaker 1: concentrations not good. That's not good capitalism. That's bad capitalism.
Speaker 1: And I've already said capitalism where I benefit, you benefit more.
Speaker 1: Bad capitalism is where I benefit and you pay a
Speaker 1: price for it. The answer is an abandoning capitalism. The
Speaker 1: answer is improving it. Let me tell you what capitalism is, right, capitalism.
Speaker 1: Let's just say it's a table in front of you. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about negotiation. On one side of that table
Speaker 1: is a capitalist and the other side of the table
Speaker 1: is a consumer. Let's make you the capitalist for the moment.
Speaker 1: Just to make this very provocative, Let's as soon that
Speaker 1: you're selling a new comb, you create it to somebody
Speaker 1: who wants to straighten their hair or comb their hair
Speaker 1: on the other side. So, your job in this example,
Speaker 1: as the capitalist, mister and missus capitalists listening to this,
Speaker 1: your job is to extract as much price, resources money
Speaker 1: from the consumer as you can while delivering the least
Speaker 1: amount of acceptable value for quality product as you can,
Speaker 1: just to maximize your profit. Now, the consumer on the
Speaker 1: other side, the consumer's job is to pay the least
Speaker 1: that they can possibly negotiate to that capitalist for that product,
Speaker 1: while extracting as much as they possibly can in value
Speaker 1: from that product and from that capitalist as they possibly can.
Speaker 1: And every good negotiation at that table is when everybody
Speaker 1: leaves that table slightly annoyed because nobody got actually everything
Speaker 1: they wanted.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: I've just explained capitalism and negotiation and I don't know
Speaker 1: two minutes. Now, make that go viral. Let's now deal
Speaker 1: with socialism. It's government ownership or heavy control of large
Speaker 1: portions of the economy. Government ownership or heavy controls of
Speaker 1: large or substantial parts of the economy. It's still capitalism,
Speaker 1: by the way, in the Nordic countries like Norway and Sweden.
Speaker 1: Sweden has got timber and technology, by the way, Finland
Speaker 1: has got technologies. Norway when my brother the crown Prince
Speaker 1: is my brother friend of the mother, it has oil
Speaker 1: and again other things. But these are foundational things which
Speaker 1: make money. Now the question is whether they're going to
Speaker 1: do with the money. So now that talks about the
Speaker 1: taxing system in these countries, there's heavy taxes. Taxes in
Speaker 1: these places tend to be higher, Registribution plays a larger role,
Speaker 1: government services tend to be larger. Right, But keep in mind, yes,
Speaker 1: there's no body at the bottom in this example, nobody
Speaker 1: who looks like you at the bottom. But I would
Speaker 1: argue if you're black or brown, by the way, or
Speaker 1: women or anybody left behind in society or feel like
Speaker 1: you left behind. You will find in these places there's
Speaker 1: nobody who looks like you. Nobody meaning a large portion
Speaker 1: of people or even many who look like you at
Speaker 1: the top. So you don't get you're not at the bottom.
Speaker 1: I mean that falls in the cracks. But you're not
Speaker 1: making it to the top either. You are being subsidized,
Speaker 1: chilling in the midst You know, you're just getting by, right,
Speaker 1: not bad, But that's what that is. So America already
Speaker 1: has its socialist features. Okay, social security is a part
Speaker 1: of socialism, or is an aspect of socialism. Medicare okay, medicaid,
Speaker 1: public education, police, fire departments, roads, the military. You aren't
Speaker 1: paying for these things. The government's providing it. These are
Speaker 1: public goods, public goods, the public good. Having public goods
Speaker 1: does not make America socialists, right, But there are social
Speaker 1: aspects to this. There are social safety net which I
Speaker 1: think actually helps to make this country great. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: fall through the cracks. You shouldn't die because of health
Speaker 1: or poverty of the mouth of food or you know,
Speaker 1: you should everybody should have reasonable But I do like
Speaker 1: the fact that you can go from the bottom to
Speaker 1: the top, just like me.
Speaker 2: In America, and you couldn't.
Speaker 1: I could not be My experiment of me could not
Speaker 1: have been proven out anywhere else in the world. Think
Speaker 1: about that, John O'Brien would not have emerged from Germany
Speaker 1: or Japan, or Russia or China, France, all these different places,
Speaker 1: even though France is where the world entrepreneur comes from.
Speaker 1: So this now deal with communism and communism. The government
Speaker 1: owns virtually everything, controls everything, controls your movements. Little private ownership,
Speaker 1: and if it is, it's micromanaged and can be snatched
Speaker 1: from you in a moment's notice. No freedom whatsoever about
Speaker 1: the government. The people entrepreneurs in China who just want
Speaker 1: to say the wrong thing in one day, they just disappear,
Speaker 1: like the wealthy is most powerful people in China just disappear.
Speaker 1: That's not good in my opinion. So it's little private ownership,
Speaker 1: little entrepreneurship, at least not in the traditional sense. Government
Speaker 1: decides production, government decides prices. History has shown repeatedly that
Speaker 1: this suppression and this suppressed innovation and economic freedom does
Speaker 1: not work. In fact, some of the worst tragedies in
Speaker 1: the world history have been socialist countries. Don't trust me
Speaker 1: to do research, use that smartphone to be smart, use
Speaker 1: AI to study the things I'm telling you. The track
Speaker 1: record of countries that have pursued socialism has been absolutely tragic.
Speaker 1: Communism even worse. In fact, the countries that say they're
Speaker 1: communists today Russia and China are China and Russia, as
Speaker 1: two examples, are really pursuing capitalism, but saying that they're
Speaker 1: pursuing communism. I think about that. America was never pure capitalism.
Speaker 1: This is where the nuance is important, and America has
Speaker 1: always been a mixed economy like markets and rules, competition,
Speaker 1: consumer protection, social safety nets, property rights, patent protections, infrastructure,
Speaker 1: roads and streets, and all that stuff. Bank regulation, securities regulation,
Speaker 1: isn't a wall street. The genius wasn't government. The genius
Speaker 1: wasn't markets. The genius was balanced and unleashing untapped human
Speaker 1: potential of her people us, which is what I'm all
Speaker 1: about today. My website Brian grid Ventures, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to go there and read my Brian Journal pieces that
Speaker 1: I write every week and sign up for the difference
Speaker 1: services and programs of all my companies and organizations, including
Speaker 1: Operation Hope.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: But if you go there, it says in the right
Speaker 1: of the homepage. Unleashing untapped human potential at scale. So,
Speaker 1: now let's deal with the difference between good capitalism and
Speaker 1: bad capitalism and begin to wrap this episode up. And
Speaker 1: then I'll I'll go deeper if you want me to. Right,
Speaker 1: But there's probably enough for this. But this is the
Speaker 1: heart of this episode.
Speaker 2: Right. I don't defend every form of capitalism. I do not.
Speaker 1: I defend good capitalism. I have compassion for those who
Speaker 1: are frustrated. I want to be an engine for those
Speaker 1: who want to create wealth and opportunity for themselves through
Speaker 1: good capitalism. It's not a depression of the bad. It's
Speaker 1: a celebration of the untapped good. It's not like we
Speaker 1: got the memo and screwed it up. We just never
Speaker 1: got the memo. That's my fourth book. I think I
Speaker 1: have seven books out. So good capitalism creates opportunity. Bad
Speaker 1: capitalism protects insiders. Good capitalism encourages competition. Bad capitalism rewards monopolies.
Speaker 1: Good capitalism grows entrepreneurs. Bad capitalism eliminates competition. Good capitalism
Speaker 1: expands ownership. Bad capitalism concentrates ownership. Your head should be
Speaker 1: nodding as you're listening to this. It should be like,
Speaker 1: it's like an un it's just an unforced agreement. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this makes sense because it's common sense, but commonism is
Speaker 1: not so common. Good capitalism rewards innovation. Bad capitalism rewards
Speaker 1: political connections.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Good capitalism builds communities. Bad capitalism extracts from communities. Here's
Speaker 1: a philosophy. This is what I've spent my entire life building.
Speaker 1: It's called inclusive economics and good capitalism through capitalism for
Speaker 1: all and all the eneities. I've created to stand it
Speaker 1: up so that we can say PhDs are good, PhDs
Speaker 1: are better. Let's actually and they let you know, five
Speaker 1: billion dollars with a capital be deployed to set people's
Speaker 1: dreams free and create opportunity for them. This is not
Speaker 1: redist distributing wealth. That I'm doing is creating more wealth creators,
Speaker 1: not attacking success, expanding what success looks like. So let's
Speaker 1: stop hating on wealth and start creating some. I am
Speaker 1: not anti rich, I'm anti poverty. I'll say it again,
Speaker 1: I am not anti rich, I am anti poverty.
Speaker 2: What about you? These are two different things entirely. America
Speaker 2: doesn't need fewer successful people. The world doesn't.
Speaker 1: America in the world needs millions and millions of more
Speaker 1: successful people. These twelve hundred millionaires a day need to
Speaker 1: look like us. Can I get an amen? Especially the
Speaker 1: people who never thought success was possible for them? That's
Speaker 1: who I want to win. This is where the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement comes in. The third reconstruction, Economic empowerment, financial literacy,
Speaker 1: the unfinished work of doctor martinther King Junior and my
Speaker 1: mentor Andrew Young, access to good credit, entrepreneurship, home ownership, investment,
Speaker 1: AI education, small business, employee ownership, stakeholder capitalism. I call
Speaker 1: it Delta Airlines and divisions of KKR and Apollo. There
Speaker 1: are great examples of this stakeholder capitalism model at work.
Speaker 1: This is how we reduce inequality people. We get on
Speaker 1: with building more ownership. This is an ownership generation in
Speaker 1: my opinion, or it could be so. Driving wealth away
Speaker 1: hurts everybody, so let me just deal with this. We
Speaker 1: need to avoid the politics, the partisan politics that doesn't
Speaker 1: solve anything.
Speaker 2: We need to.
Speaker 1: Educate ourselves and how economics really works, and educate people
Speaker 1: so they can help themselves help themselves. When entrepreneurs leave
Speaker 1: a city or a state who wants to penalize them,
Speaker 1: tax them hunt them, humiliate them, hurt them, point fingers
Speaker 1: at them. When that happens, they leave. And I've been
Speaker 1: talking to billionaires and multi millionaires the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: We're leaving out of a couple of states in particular.
Speaker 1: That's not good. When they leave, economic energy leaves, investment,
Speaker 1: leaves jobs, leave innovation and creativity that they fund it
Speaker 1: or could fund, leaves charitable giving in the local communities leave, leadership,
Speaker 1: leaves headquarters of companies, leave, opportunities leave, communities begin to die.
Speaker 1: Every governor, every mayor, every governor, every business leader, she
Speaker 1: asks this question, how do we attract more investment, not
Speaker 1: how do.
Speaker 2: We punish investment.
Speaker 1: I'm involved in a big investment here in Atlanta, Centennial Yards.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna investor in it. It's the biggest investment in
Speaker 1: Atlanta since Atlanta. It was a debate here. Luckily we
Speaker 1: came on the right side of it. It's six billion dollars,
Speaker 1: the biggest investment in Atlanta since Atlanta itself. And it's
Speaker 1: going to create jobs from the bottom of the top.
Speaker 1: It's going to create opportunity, affordable housing, economic vitality. It's
Speaker 1: going to create a downtown which Atlanta doesn't have it's
Speaker 1: win win. The city wins, the state wins, the county
Speaker 1: wins thirty percent of all contracts. And to those at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the economic pyramid, they win.
Speaker 2: Again. Affordable housing is going to come in hopefully. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be part of that. You know what.
Speaker 1: To me, it's a rational movement of common sense. So
Speaker 1: this is the third reconstruction people, and this ties back
Speaker 1: to the book Capitalism for All. America has already experienced
Speaker 1: great reconstructions. Second, the first one was about freedom civil War.
Speaker 1: Second one was about access civil rights movement. That's the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. My mentor, Ambassador Andrew Young and his dear friend,
Speaker 1: doctor Martha King Jr. And doctor Dorothy Heyde and all
Speaker 1: the heroes and heroes who made that fight right. They
Speaker 1: had the NAACP, they head of the Urban League, etc.
Speaker 1: The next reconstruction is economics. It's ownership in nature, financial literacy,
Speaker 1: credit ownership, entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, technology, when capital is code
Speaker 1: real financial capital. This is the new civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: I call it the silver rights movement. From civil rights
Speaker 1: to civil rights, from the streets to the suites, not
Speaker 1: because graces no longer matter, but because money touches everyone.
Speaker 1: Color is not white or black, or red or blue.
Speaker 1: It's green. It's always been green. So here's America I
Speaker 1: believe in. My dream isn't in America with fewer rich people.
Speaker 1: It's in America with dramatically fewer poor people. Can I
Speaker 1: get an amen? My dream isn't redistribution, it's expansion. It's deepening.
Speaker 1: My dream isn't resentment, it's aspiration. My dream isn't the storm,
Speaker 1: it's the rainbow that follows storms. You cannot have a
Speaker 1: rainbow without a storm first. My dream isn't dependency, it's
Speaker 1: dignity through ownership. My dream isn't to tear down success,
Speaker 1: it's to multiply it.
Speaker 2: At scale.
Speaker 1: That's why I wrote Capitalism for All, not capitalism for
Speaker 1: Wall Street, not capitalism for Olive Guards, or capitalism for
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Not capitalism for the privilege, Capitalism for all,
Speaker 1: Capitalism for you. If you're listening today, don't ask yourself
Speaker 1: who should I blame? That's the wrong question. Ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what can I build? What skill can I learn? What
Speaker 1: business can I start? What investment can I make starting
Speaker 1: with the one in yourself? What young person can I
Speaker 1: mentor what wealth can I create? How do I bless
Speaker 1: someone else that I'm blessed too? Because service is the
Speaker 1: price we pay for the success that we get. Wealth
Speaker 1: isn't just about money, It's about freedom. What are you
Speaker 1: going to do with your freedom? Just help you or
Speaker 1: help somebody else too. That's what I try to do.
Speaker 1: To do well and do good, to do well by
Speaker 1: doing good. Opportunity, dignity, legacy, and that that's the case.
Speaker 1: That's the case I'm making for good capitalism. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for joining me for this week's episode
Speaker 1: of Money and Wealth. This conversation challenged you, inspired you, hopefully,
Speaker 1: changed you, moved you. Share it with someone you care about.
Speaker 1: And get the book Capitalism for All and talk about
Speaker 1: it as you read it. And remember, financial literacy is
Speaker 1: not about getting rich. It's about becoming free through literacy
Speaker 1: and understanding of how this game works. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I want you to keep learning, keep growing, returning, keep building,
Speaker 1: keep moving, and lead from the front. And I want
Speaker 1: you to read this last book, which I think is
Speaker 1: my best one, Capitalism for All, and I want you
Speaker 1: to read it once and put it down. I want
Speaker 1: you to read it once twice three times four times.
Speaker 1: Listen gen on audiobook that we have to underline it,
Speaker 1: underscore it, dog ear it, talk about it, create conversations
Speaker 1: and barbershops and beauty salons and sororities and fraternities. Let's
Speaker 1: start a movement that change the world. Let's be the
Speaker 1: light on the hill. I'm John O'Brien and this is
Speaker 1: Money and Wealth. Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is
Speaker 1: a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.