1
00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:08,160
Speaker 1: Welcome to it Could Happen here podcast about things falling

2
00:00:08,200 --> 00:00:10,800
Speaker 1: apart from what you can do about it. My name

3
00:00:10,840 --> 00:00:13,920
Speaker 1: is Christopher Wong, and today I'm gonna be talking about sabotage.

4
00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:16,880
Speaker 1: But this is not the episode on sabotage that you expect.

5
00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:22,000
Speaker 1: I will not be discussing, for example, the destruction of machinery,

6
00:00:22,360 --> 00:00:25,680
Speaker 1: throwing monkey wrenches, slow down strikes, or the myriad of

7
00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:28,440
Speaker 1: other tactics that workers have used since time memorium to

8
00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:31,840
Speaker 1: strike back at their bosses. No, Instead, I'm going to

9
00:00:31,880 --> 00:00:34,959
Speaker 1: be talking about a far more common, an infinitely more

10
00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:40,920
Speaker 1: dangerous form of sabotage, corporate sabotage. Now, the most conficuous

11
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:43,560
Speaker 1: form of corporate sabotage is the mass destruction of a

12
00:00:43,600 --> 00:00:48,000
Speaker 1: corporation's own products. The fashion company Burberry, for example, destroyed

13
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:50,600
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventy million dollars of its own product

14
00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:54,640
Speaker 1: in one year alone. Louis Vutton and Chanel also systematically

15
00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:57,680
Speaker 1: destroy their own sold stock every year, joining H and

16
00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:00,200
Speaker 1: M and literally lighting their own sold products on fire

17
00:01:00,200 --> 00:01:03,640
Speaker 1: in order to prevent anyone from using them. Quote business

18
00:01:03,720 --> 00:01:08,080
Speaker 1: insider Richemont, the owner of Cadalier BoNT Blanc, destroyed more

19
00:01:08,120 --> 00:01:10,959
Speaker 1: than four million pounds of watches over a two year

20
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:13,720
Speaker 1: period after an excess in goods in the Asian markets.

21
00:01:14,319 --> 00:01:17,200
Speaker 1: Nik has also admitted that a New York store slashed

22
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,600
Speaker 1: unsold trainers before throwing them away, and last year an

23
00:01:20,680 --> 00:01:23,480
Speaker 1: Urban Outfitters employee said he was instructed to pour green

24
00:01:23,600 --> 00:01:27,040
Speaker 1: paints on the unsold stock. These, of course, are only

25
00:01:27,080 --> 00:01:29,480
Speaker 1: the stories that have made it into the press, and

26
00:01:29,560 --> 00:01:32,240
Speaker 1: this behavior is by no means limited to high fashion.

27
00:01:32,760 --> 00:01:36,399
Speaker 1: Grocery stores routinely throw away normous quantities of unsold goods,

28
00:01:37,280 --> 00:01:39,640
Speaker 1: and when communities realized they could feed people in need

29
00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:43,040
Speaker 1: by taking the still good products from grocery store dumpstairs,

30
00:01:43,319 --> 00:01:46,720
Speaker 1: the stories began to destroy their food intentionally. But these

31
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:50,320
Speaker 1: acts of destruction, as callous and horrifically greedy as they are,

32
00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:54,640
Speaker 1: are by no means the extent of corporate sabotage. To

33
00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:58,640
Speaker 1: explain I turned to the work of the economist Thorston Veblen.

34
00:01:59,720 --> 00:02:02,160
Speaker 1: That one is perhaps best known today for the theory

35
00:02:02,200 --> 00:02:06,680
Speaker 1: of conspicuous consumption, but he wrote extensively on corporate sabotage

36
00:02:08,240 --> 00:02:10,880
Speaker 1: in the first part of the Engineers in the Price System,

37
00:02:10,919 --> 00:02:13,520
Speaker 1: a work that is broadly ignored even by his followers.

38
00:02:13,880 --> 00:02:17,040
Speaker 1: Febun wrote a section called on the Nature and Uses

39
00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:21,880
Speaker 1: of Sabotage. From that work, Writers and speakers who dilate

40
00:02:21,919 --> 00:02:25,480
Speaker 1: on the militarious exploits of the nation's businessmen will not

41
00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,799
Speaker 1: commonly allude to this voluminous running administration near sabotage, this

42
00:02:29,919 --> 00:02:34,320
Speaker 1: conscientious withdrawal of efficiency that goes into their ordinary day's work.

43
00:02:34,800 --> 00:02:37,120
Speaker 1: We are not used to thinking of the ordinary work

44
00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:42,079
Speaker 1: of a corporation being sabotage. But for Veblen there was

45
00:02:42,120 --> 00:02:44,960
Speaker 1: no other explanation for what he was seeing. In the

46
00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:47,480
Speaker 1: wake of World War One, there was an enormous explosion

47
00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:50,840
Speaker 1: and unemployment, an enormous need on half of the population.

48
00:02:51,560 --> 00:02:54,120
Speaker 1: But even as the unemployed begged to be let in

49
00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:56,240
Speaker 1: to create the products that could build the needs of

50
00:02:56,240 --> 00:03:00,440
Speaker 1: their fellow humans, business owners steadfastly refused to open their factories.

51
00:03:01,040 --> 00:03:05,000
Speaker 1: As Feblin explained, but for reasons of business expediency, it

52
00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:07,640
Speaker 1: is impossible to let these idle plants and idle workmen

53
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:10,080
Speaker 1: go to work, that is to say, for reasons of

54
00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:14,040
Speaker 1: insufficient profit to the businessmen interested, or in other words,

55
00:03:14,120 --> 00:03:16,919
Speaker 1: for reasons of insufficient income to the vested interests which

56
00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:20,639
Speaker 1: controlled the staple industries and so regulate the output of product.

57
00:03:21,639 --> 00:03:24,600
Speaker 1: Feblen was not alone in observing these are similar conditions.

58
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:29,079
Speaker 1: John Maynard Keynes, writing during the depression, observed newly precisely

59
00:03:29,120 --> 00:03:33,040
Speaker 1: the same thing. For Canes, the solution simply was to

60
00:03:33,040 --> 00:03:37,160
Speaker 1: have the government step into increased demand. But for Veblen

61
00:03:37,360 --> 00:03:39,640
Speaker 1: dismissed the core of the problem. The real problem was

62
00:03:39,680 --> 00:03:42,280
Speaker 1: at a core of absentee owners had the ability to

63
00:03:42,280 --> 00:03:44,320
Speaker 1: shut down the factories in the first place by simple

64
00:03:44,440 --> 00:03:48,600
Speaker 1: virtue of their ownership, Feblen argued, was simply sabotage, no

65
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:51,080
Speaker 1: different from the hated strikes of the I w W

66
00:03:51,320 --> 00:03:54,760
Speaker 1: that's so racked and perturbed the capitalist ruling class of

67
00:03:54,800 --> 00:03:57,440
Speaker 1: his time. At least, the workers could argue that they

68
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:00,320
Speaker 1: were simply fighting for a better share of what they

69
00:04:00,360 --> 00:04:03,440
Speaker 1: had created. Absentee owners, on the other hand, who had

70
00:04:03,480 --> 00:04:07,920
Speaker 1: no actual involvement in the production process whatsoever, simply carried

71
00:04:07,960 --> 00:04:11,000
Speaker 1: out sabotage on an enormous scale in order to secure

72
00:04:11,040 --> 00:04:14,440
Speaker 1: their own returns, and this was true even in times

73
00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:17,280
Speaker 1: they weren't marked by massive depressions in order to make

74
00:04:17,360 --> 00:04:21,000
Speaker 1: payments to capitalists, Feblin argued, who expect a certain rate

75
00:04:21,040 --> 00:04:24,480
Speaker 1: of return on their investment. Corporations must maintain prices at

76
00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:26,680
Speaker 1: such a level that they can meet their returns, and

77
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:29,240
Speaker 1: the only way they can do this is sabotage. For

78
00:04:29,279 --> 00:04:31,960
Speaker 1: the good of business, it is necessary to curtail production

79
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:35,040
Speaker 1: of the means of life on pain of unprofitable prices,

80
00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:38,200
Speaker 1: at the same time that the increasing need of all

81
00:04:38,200 --> 00:04:40,640
Speaker 1: sorts of necessities of life must be met in some

82
00:04:41,160 --> 00:04:45,360
Speaker 1: passable fashion on pain of popular disturbances, as it will

83
00:04:45,400 --> 00:04:47,800
Speaker 1: always come of popular distrust when they passed a limit

84
00:04:47,839 --> 00:04:51,800
Speaker 1: of tolerance. The sabotage Feblan argue was simply a product

85
00:04:51,839 --> 00:04:54,239
Speaker 1: of the price system. Any production that was too efficient

86
00:04:54,240 --> 00:04:58,160
Speaker 1: would simply and inevitably be sabotaged for private gain, because

87
00:04:58,200 --> 00:05:01,440
Speaker 1: in order to maintain prices that would maintain the returns

88
00:05:01,440 --> 00:05:04,719
Speaker 1: of investors, it was necessary when sure that production never

89
00:05:04,800 --> 00:05:08,520
Speaker 1: became too efficient to produce too many goods. Feplin used

90
00:05:08,520 --> 00:05:11,240
Speaker 1: as his example the twentieth century post office, but we

91
00:05:11,279 --> 00:05:13,920
Speaker 1: could just as easily point to Trump sabotaging the post

92
00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:17,280
Speaker 1: office in a dual bid to privatize the service by

93
00:05:17,320 --> 00:05:19,960
Speaker 1: causing it to collapse and prevent mail and votes from

94
00:05:19,960 --> 00:05:21,919
Speaker 1: being counted as part of his attempt to win the

95
00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:25,600
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty election. In their book Capitalist Power Condis,

96
00:05:25,680 --> 00:05:30,120
Speaker 1: Samshawan Bickler, and Jonathan Needson take Feplin's argument and expand

97
00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:35,640
Speaker 1: on it, noting that capitalism, far from encouraging productivity at large,

98
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:39,560
Speaker 1: makes things inefficient on purpose. They used the example of

99
00:05:39,600 --> 00:05:43,240
Speaker 1: public transportation, which is by bay essentially any measure, a

100
00:05:43,320 --> 00:05:46,240
Speaker 1: significantly more efficient way of moving people around the US

101
00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:50,640
Speaker 1: as an example. In the US and the nineteen forties,

102
00:05:50,839 --> 00:05:53,160
Speaker 1: a hundred electric rail lines were brought up and destroyed

103
00:05:53,200 --> 00:05:59,039
Speaker 1: by car companies. Those same companies likewise twice destroyed incredibly

104
00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:02,360
Speaker 1: efficient and popular electric cars, once in the nineteen thirties

105
00:06:02,400 --> 00:06:05,080
Speaker 1: and again in the nineteen eighties because the profit rate

106
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:08,200
Speaker 1: was lower than that of gas cars. They then set

107
00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:10,359
Speaker 1: out to cause everyone to forget that they had actually

108
00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:12,680
Speaker 1: done this until Elon Musk figured out a way to

109
00:06:12,680 --> 00:06:16,040
Speaker 1: sell electric cars that was profitable, namely by selling himself

110
00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:18,440
Speaker 1: as a brand and not the cars themselves. Now, if

111
00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:21,359
Speaker 1: capitalism was simply destroying its own products in order to

112
00:06:21,400 --> 00:06:24,360
Speaker 1: create Elon Musks, you could argue that the system at

113
00:06:24,400 --> 00:06:27,440
Speaker 1: least produced advancements before it stopped them. But the most

114
00:06:27,480 --> 00:06:32,200
Speaker 1: violent forms of sabotage are reserved for productive systems that

115
00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:37,440
Speaker 1: are simultaneously efficient and outside of capitalist control together. Perhaps

116
00:06:37,440 --> 00:06:39,720
Speaker 1: the best known example of this is the East British

117
00:06:39,720 --> 00:06:43,480
Speaker 1: East India companies the industrialization of the Indian textile industry,

118
00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:47,720
Speaker 1: not to be outmatched by their British forebearers. American settlers

119
00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:51,760
Speaker 1: and their allies in the American military sterminated the buffalo

120
00:06:51,839 --> 00:06:55,159
Speaker 1: herds of the Great Plains in an attempt to starve

121
00:06:55,200 --> 00:06:58,560
Speaker 1: out the indigenous tribes that lived there. In doing so,

122
00:06:58,680 --> 00:07:02,280
Speaker 1: they destroyed it enormously doctive and sustainable agricultural system. They

123
00:07:02,279 --> 00:07:06,440
Speaker 1: did so precisely because the system was efficient, so efficient,

124
00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:11,360
Speaker 1: in fact, that it allowed indigenous tribes to repeatedly defeat

125
00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:14,240
Speaker 1: the American army and defence of their lands. We are

126
00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:17,040
Speaker 1: used to thinking of capitalism as the system of production,

127
00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:21,720
Speaker 1: but here, amidst the fields of buffalo corpses something else

128
00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:26,280
Speaker 1: entirely capitalism appearing in its true form, a system of

129
00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:40,720
Speaker 1: organized sabotage. To fully untangle what this means, let us

130
00:07:40,760 --> 00:07:45,920
Speaker 1: return to Feblin. Feblin divided capitalism into two separate processes.

131
00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:51,160
Speaker 1: The first he called industry industry Feblin argued, has existed

132
00:07:51,480 --> 00:07:54,400
Speaker 1: long before capitalism and will continue to exist long after

133
00:07:54,440 --> 00:07:56,760
Speaker 1: it has a bit Clear and niets and put it

134
00:07:57,240 --> 00:08:02,160
Speaker 1: quote when considered an isolation from emporary business institutions. The

135
00:08:02,200 --> 00:08:07,120
Speaker 1: principal goal of industry it's raison, according to Veblen, is

136
00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:09,840
Speaker 1: the efficient production of quality goods and services for the

137
00:08:09,880 --> 00:08:14,160
Speaker 1: betterment of human life. Industry is an inherently collective undertaking.

138
00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 1: The basis is cooperation and integration, the creation of communal

139
00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:22,520
Speaker 1: knowledge that allows production and scientific advance to occur, and

140
00:08:22,560 --> 00:08:26,360
Speaker 1: coordination and cooperation between people to create things for each other.

141
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:29,880
Speaker 1: Left to its own devices, industry would simply produce goods

142
00:08:29,920 --> 00:08:33,760
Speaker 1: for people. It has no concern for profitability, rates of returns,

143
00:08:33,800 --> 00:08:38,559
Speaker 1: or capitalization. Unfortunately, capitalism is defined by private ownership. This

144
00:08:38,640 --> 00:08:41,760
Speaker 1: is what Veblen calls business. Business is a system of

145
00:08:41,760 --> 00:08:45,240
Speaker 1: power that extracts wealth from industry by means of sabotage

146
00:08:45,679 --> 00:08:49,839
Speaker 1: production to serve human need. The basis of industry is

147
00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:52,080
Speaker 1: useless to business unless it can be turned into a

148
00:08:52,120 --> 00:08:55,600
Speaker 1: revenue stream. It does this by taking control of industry

149
00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:58,040
Speaker 1: and its products and the restricting access to it. Part

150
00:08:58,040 --> 00:09:01,280
Speaker 1: Clear and Nichs input it the most important feature of

151
00:09:01,320 --> 00:09:04,640
Speaker 1: private ownership is not that it enables those who own,

152
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:09,120
Speaker 1: but that it disables those who do not. Technically, anyone

153
00:09:09,160 --> 00:09:11,599
Speaker 1: can get in someone else's car and drive away, But

154
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,320
Speaker 1: given order to sell all of Warren Buffett shares in

155
00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:18,800
Speaker 1: Berkshire hathaway, the purpose of private ownership is wholly and

156
00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:23,840
Speaker 1: only an institution of exclusion. An institutional exclusion is a

157
00:09:23,840 --> 00:09:26,960
Speaker 1: matter of organized power. As we can see from the

158
00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:30,400
Speaker 1: genocide on the Plans, This power is no abstract force.

159
00:09:30,559 --> 00:09:33,440
Speaker 1: Beblin tends to focus on the power of absentee owners

160
00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:37,120
Speaker 1: to stop production, and for good reason, but business stands

161
00:09:37,120 --> 00:09:40,160
Speaker 1: in the way of industry in more immediate ways too.

162
00:09:40,600 --> 00:09:43,600
Speaker 1: After all, the purpose of cooperative industry is to make

163
00:09:43,640 --> 00:09:46,800
Speaker 1: goods to improve our lives. And yet in between us

164
00:09:46,840 --> 00:09:50,080
Speaker 1: and the proceeds that industry creates to slerve our needs,

165
00:09:50,880 --> 00:09:54,000
Speaker 1: there is a cash register in a cop Even the

166
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:57,160
Speaker 1: creators of a Louis Vuitton bag, or for that matter,

167
00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:01,040
Speaker 1: a tomato, have no claim on it. Its business takes over,

168
00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:03,440
Speaker 1: and business would rather destroy it than see it fall

169
00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:07,480
Speaker 1: into their hands. The famous Russian anarchist theorist Peter Kirpopkin

170
00:10:07,880 --> 00:10:10,400
Speaker 1: was writing along similar lines to Veblen just a few

171
00:10:10,440 --> 00:10:13,640
Speaker 1: years before Feblen, it seems, have been exposed to anarchist

172
00:10:13,679 --> 00:10:16,880
Speaker 1: ideas through his association with the Industrial workers of the World.

173
00:10:17,679 --> 00:10:20,760
Speaker 1: In early nineteen hundreds, it was not altogether unusual for

174
00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:24,960
Speaker 1: economists to move in radical circles. The great Italian economist

175
00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:28,760
Speaker 1: Piero's Raffles smuggled pens and papers to Antonio Gramsey, while Grumsey,

176
00:10:29,320 --> 00:10:32,240
Speaker 1: the head of the Italian Communist Party, was a prisoner

177
00:10:32,559 --> 00:10:35,720
Speaker 1: with the Italian fascist regime. Grapha would later extract the

178
00:10:35,760 --> 00:10:41,679
Speaker 1: writings that Crampsy had written in prison Unlesian Gramsey's prison

179
00:10:41,720 --> 00:10:44,560
Speaker 1: notebooks onto the world. But Veblin was unique even among

180
00:10:44,600 --> 00:10:47,360
Speaker 1: these economists for the extent that he incorporated radical theories

181
00:10:47,400 --> 00:10:51,280
Speaker 1: directly into his work. As you've seen was his adoption

182
00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:55,560
Speaker 1: of sabotage as a way of thinking about capitalism. This

183
00:10:55,679 --> 00:10:58,240
Speaker 1: led Veblen to call the end of the system of

184
00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:04,079
Speaker 1: what he described as vested interests and absentee owners. Febulance solution, however,

185
00:11:04,559 --> 00:11:08,480
Speaker 1: which he described as a quote sovietive technicians would manage

186
00:11:08,520 --> 00:11:12,040
Speaker 1: production for all society leaves a lot to be desired for.

187
00:11:12,800 --> 00:11:15,840
Speaker 1: So let us return to the source Herscropotkin in the

188
00:11:15,880 --> 00:11:20,200
Speaker 1: Conquest of Bread the minds, so they represent the labor

189
00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:23,600
Speaker 1: of several generations, and derive their sole value from the

190
00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:27,320
Speaker 1: requirements of the industry of a nation and the density

191
00:11:27,360 --> 00:11:31,480
Speaker 1: of the population. The minds also belonged to the few,

192
00:11:32,120 --> 00:11:34,640
Speaker 1: and these few restrict the output of coal, are prevented

193
00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:39,839
Speaker 1: entirely if they find a more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too,

194
00:11:39,960 --> 00:11:43,839
Speaker 1: has become the exclusive property of the few. And even

195
00:11:43,840 --> 00:11:48,800
Speaker 1: when a machine and contestedly represents an improvements added to

196
00:11:48,840 --> 00:11:53,160
Speaker 1: the original rough invention by three or four generations of workers,

197
00:11:53,520 --> 00:11:56,840
Speaker 1: it nonetheless belongs to a few owners. And if the

198
00:11:56,840 --> 00:12:00,680
Speaker 1: descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine

199
00:12:00,720 --> 00:12:04,360
Speaker 1: for lace building a century ago were to present themselves

200
00:12:04,360 --> 00:12:07,560
Speaker 1: today at a lace factory and bail or Nottingham and

201
00:12:07,640 --> 00:12:11,080
Speaker 1: demand their rights, they would be told hands off, this

202
00:12:11,160 --> 00:12:13,400
Speaker 1: machine is not yours, and they would be shot down

203
00:12:13,440 --> 00:12:16,800
Speaker 1: if they attempted to take possession of it. Here we

204
00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:20,080
Speaker 1: see the competition between two different kinds of rights. On

205
00:12:20,120 --> 00:12:23,959
Speaker 1: the one hand, the right of industry, the right of creativity,

206
00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:27,000
Speaker 1: the right of those who produce and care for each

207
00:12:27,040 --> 00:12:30,760
Speaker 1: other to be able to determine where are the proceeds

208
00:12:30,800 --> 00:12:33,920
Speaker 1: of their labor go. From industry's point of view, this

209
00:12:34,040 --> 00:12:37,760
Speaker 1: is to each other, to those in need, into society

210
00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,320
Speaker 1: as a whole. On the other hand, there is the

211
00:12:40,400 --> 00:12:42,559
Speaker 1: right of property, the right of men with guns to

212
00:12:42,640 --> 00:12:45,400
Speaker 1: throw oysters into the ocean because it's not profitable for

213
00:12:45,440 --> 00:12:48,599
Speaker 1: anyone to eat them. Capitalism has developed a myriad of

214
00:12:48,679 --> 00:12:52,640
Speaker 1: iterations precisely the same principle, and the world is now

215
00:12:52,640 --> 00:12:57,480
Speaker 1: infested by them. Patent trolls haunt they already fraught waters

216
00:12:57,480 --> 00:13:01,240
Speaker 1: of intellectual property, buying up patents for cheap or on

217
00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:05,679
Speaker 1: rare occasions, creating something themselves for the sole purpose, or

218
00:13:05,760 --> 00:13:08,720
Speaker 1: preventing anyone else from using it, making money by suing

219
00:13:08,760 --> 00:13:12,000
Speaker 1: anyone who dares try. Large corporations, of course, to precisely

220
00:13:12,080 --> 00:13:15,480
Speaker 1: the same thing, see for example, Disney's War. In the

221
00:13:15,559 --> 00:13:19,880
Speaker 1: concept of anything, anything at all, falling into the public domain,

222
00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:24,520
Speaker 1: the sabotage, and on this all four of our interlocutors

223
00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:29,240
Speaker 1: Veblin Kropotkin clear needs and degree as long as private

224
00:13:29,240 --> 00:13:33,360
Speaker 1: ownership exists, because sabotage is all private ownership really is.

225
00:13:34,520 --> 00:13:37,359
Speaker 1: But it is not simply enough to answer corporate sabotage

226
00:13:37,360 --> 00:13:40,720
Speaker 1: with their own sabotage. As Veblin pointed out, this is

227
00:13:40,720 --> 00:13:44,760
Speaker 1: simply the ordinary state of affairs under capitalism. For Capotkin,

228
00:13:44,880 --> 00:13:50,720
Speaker 1: the answer was simple. This rich endowments, painfully one builded, fashioned,

229
00:13:50,840 --> 00:13:54,320
Speaker 1: or invented by our ancestors, must become common property, so

230
00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:57,480
Speaker 1: that the collective interest of men may gain forbid the

231
00:13:57,520 --> 00:14:00,760
Speaker 1: greatest good for all. There must be appropriate ation the

232
00:14:00,800 --> 00:14:05,480
Speaker 1: well being of all the end expropriation. The means how

233
00:14:05,559 --> 00:14:07,679
Speaker 1: precisely to go about doing such a thing has been

234
00:14:07,679 --> 00:14:10,120
Speaker 1: the subject of endless debate for nearly two hundred years,

235
00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:13,480
Speaker 1: And I am not arrogant enough to propose to solve

236
00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:16,679
Speaker 1: the problem here. But a system where a company can

237
00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:20,280
Speaker 1: prevent even the US government from attempting to produce ventilators

238
00:14:20,800 --> 00:14:23,520
Speaker 1: by simply buying up the company that won the contract

239
00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:26,760
Speaker 1: and refusing to fill the order to maintain the value

240
00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:29,680
Speaker 1: of the ventilators it was already producing. Is a system

241
00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:32,520
Speaker 1: based on nothing less than ensuring that people will die

242
00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:35,920
Speaker 1: for or five percent rate of return. If we are

243
00:14:36,040 --> 00:14:39,480
Speaker 1: to have any hope of stopping the ravages that climate

244
00:14:39,560 --> 00:14:43,160
Speaker 1: change promises for our future, we cannot afford to be

245
00:14:43,200 --> 00:14:45,200
Speaker 1: sabotaged at every step,