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The application is currently unavailable. Hey there, Freethinkers! It’s Michael Burns and Producer Henry here, and we’re excited to welcome you to Wisecrack Live this Thursday, July 6th. We’ve got a great show planned for you, and we’re starting on time so there won’t be any of those comments that come up about us starting late. We’ve got Jacobo Opinion here for the first time, and we’ve got Ashley B, Penny, Cheyenne, Ryan, CDP, John, Lexa, Peter, Penny, Christopher Maverick PhD, Unknown Number, Cali Zabrenko, and Ben, all joining us.
This is going to be the last Wisecrack Live for a bit, so we don’t know when we’ll be back. But, for all of our Danish viewers, we say High High! Did you know that in Denmark, if you’re saying hi to someone, you say hi hi?
Due to Buy donating blood, we’re running slightly low, but we appreciate the good deed! Dominic says only nerds complain when class doesn’t start on time, and I’ll say this: let’s start by complaining about everyone who complains about us not having dedicated chapter titles and time stamps. We can only do so much, so I appreciate those of you who understand that.
I’m going to be eating blueberries during the stream today for the antioxidants and other stuff, so get used to that! And, Dirkster, thank you so much for the jerks - I really appreciate it and I’ll pass that on to the child.
It’s 8 PM in Central Europe, so we’re talking somewhere in Asia. We’ve got a lot to get into today, so let’s get started! ry about it
This is our last stream for a while, so if you’re going to miss Henry and myself, follow either of us on Twitter if you want to get quips. We had a quick Dial of Destiny corner where I quickly said what I thought and Henry spoke on it. I thought it was going to be absolute ass but it was actually very entertaining. Harrison Ford and Phoebe Wallbridge were great. There were some technical issues, but nothing too intrusive. It speaks to the impotence of fandom or the idea of hate watching something because it ruined your childhood.
Andrew Adams recently had a daughter in the 19th of last month, so give him some love! This isn’t the last Wisecrack Live ever, it’s the last Wisecrack Live for now, but we’ll be coming back. target and not the people so I think that’s a really good point
Yeah, yeah, I’m not worried and again, like we all know that most things get talked about never again, so here we go. Today, we’re all reading an entire essay by a philosopher together because we’re a group of readers. Thanks for being here and for letting us do this - it’s fun to read articles. And if you haven’t liked the stream yet, it might be helpful to do so, as the more people like it, the more YouTube serves it to people, and the better the numbers are.
In this general situation, the left must assume the slogan of Law and Order as its own. I’m going to Devil’s Advocate here and say that sometimes, young, normally comfortably middle class, very online, left-leaning people are very comfortable in being like all Law and Order and Regulation and rules and everything is bad and should all go away. It might not be the best, and there needs to be some superstructure.
Firefall said the prevention of emancipatory change is one of the many reasons why those with power or wealth will never make AI that is aligned with Humanity. I think AI is going to be aligned with the perpetuation of the security state and aligned with the perpetuation of the market, not humans.
Dead Card 13 said we should have Law and Order but it cannot be used as an excuse for brutality. When police at least in America respond to certain protests, we see that they protect the interests of capital and not the interests of individuals. So, it’s important to keep in mind that our political imaginary has to go beyond an authoritarian cop state and an anarchist utopia. John Lavelle shouted out in the chat, “If you were born in Philadelphia, I would love to see if we got some Philadelphia people.” Henry was the second of ten children and his dad, Richard George, published religious books and was a devout Episcopalian. Henry, however, was not so much and his dad forced him to go to the Episcopal Academy, but he hated it there and eventually dropped out. Despite that, he still enjoyed learning and convinced his dad to hire him a tutor and he read a lot and even attended lectures at the Franklin Institute for fun. He was particularly into economics and read Adam Smith and David Ricardo by the time he was 15.
As the family was barely scraping by to feed the family, Henry knew if he wanted to make some money he must go out on his own. He traveled the world as a cabin boy, which means he basically took care of the captain’s needs and got paid six dollars a month. Instead of returning to Philadelphia after he got done working at sea, he went to San Francisco to potentially seek gold, but after that was a bust he worked as a typesetter, a waiter, and a rice mill and a farm laborer. The job he kept coming back to was typesetter, though unfortunately Henry rarely made much money.
When he was 21, he met Annie Fox, an orphaned immigrant from Australia, and the two fell in love. Annie’s Uncle, who had been her guardian after her grandma died, didn’t appreciate how poor Henry was though and didn’t approve of the relationship, but they secretly got married anyway. The struggle financially even though they couldn’t afford to feed them, they had four kids together: Henry George Jr., who later became a United States Representative and wrote a biography about his father; Richard; Jenny; and Anna.
Following the birth of Richard, times were so tough for the Georges that Henry often had to beg for food. He later called one story, quote, “I walked along the street and made up my mind to get money from the first man whose appearance might indicate that he had it to give. I stopped a man, a stranger, and told him I wanted five dollars. He asked what I wanted it for. I told him that my wife was confined and that I had nothing to give her to eat. He gave me the money. If he had not, I think I was desperate enough to have killed him.”
Things began to turn for the better when Henry realized he wanted to be a writer. By the summer of 1867, Henry had become the managing editor of the newly created San Francisco Times and was writing political editorials for local newspapers, even though he had no formal training. His editorials became quite popular and led to promotions. Henry wrote his most influential article up to that point in 1868, called “What the Railroad Will Bring Us”, which was a response to the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad. He argued that the railroad would benefit only some people, by killing small towns and small businesses while propping up already great cities and already huge corporations. He also called for future populist reforms like secret ballots, public ownership of certain natural monopolies, and the right to vote for women. Henry was also a proponent of free trade, rather than protectionism. He ran for office in California but was handily defeated by the railroad industry.
As Henry’s editorials grew more popular, his family finally got out of poverty. In 1868, he had an aha moment when he traveled to New York City and was struck by the fact that those in poverty in such a great city with great wealth were apparently a lot worse off than those in poverty back home in California, a place with much less development. The second aha moment happened in 1870 when Henry sat on his horse overlooking San Francisco Bay and was told that an seemingly unimportant acre of farmland nearby would sell for one thousand dollars. He wrote his first analysis of what he called the “land question” in 1871.
Henry helped found the San Francisco Daily Evening Post and became its editor, and it was here that he first became exposed to his land value tax idea. Unfortunately, he accumulated lots of debts with the Evening Post and his family ended up in dire poverty again. Fortunately for Henry, by 1876 he was a minor celebrity and began giving speeches. He was able to travel around different cities and talk about his ideas. Henry George’s book, Progress and Poverty, didn’t sell well at first, but slowly gained traction due to word of mouth. His reputation grew, and he promoted the book in Europe, spreading his solution for eradicating poverty and reducing extreme wealth inequality. This solution was the single land value tax, which completely replaced the taxes the workers paid on their income and the taxes the owners paid on their capital. The book eventually sold millions of copies and made Henry George a household name, and at the peak of the book’s popularity, he was the third most famous man in the United States, behind Thomas Edison and Mark Twain.
George argued that a single land tax would actually encourage and promote economic activity by discouraging people from hoarding land or holding it for speculation. Sales taxes and excise taxes, as well as income taxes and corporate taxes, can slow down the economy by discouraging production, but a land tax would not cause deadweight loss since the supply of land is fixed. edowns for us so you guys will love those
Yeah, it sounds really fun! I personally liked Asteroid City and I agree it’s up there with Grand Budapest Hotel as one of my favorite Wes Anderson movies. Dark and Cali were both great shows and I really appreciate the parenting advice emails. People are playing some games, watching Nimona, Love Island, the new Killer Mike album, Diablo 4, Neuromancer, Street Fighter, Just Like Dad season two, The Will to Change by Bell Hooks, For All Mankind, and The Right Gemstones.
I’m watching Secret Invasion but it feels like it needs more of a budget to be what it wants to be. I think it’d be better as a movie. When I’m on leave, our friend Helen Flourish is doing some hoedowns for us, so you guys will love those!